Passing all that “fishy” dissent about Obamacare.  Dishing all those facts at all those kool-aid-sotted neo-socs.  All those blog posts, talk shows, tea parties.  All that dissent.

All for nothing, as the White House shuts down “flag@whitehous.gov”:

E-mails to that address now bounce back with the message: “The e-mail address you just sent a message to is no longer in service. We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.”The “flag” service was introduced Aug. 4, with a White House blog post saying: “There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

Well, at least America’s party informers still have an outlet.

…why the media spends so much time trying to build up “moderate” Republicans?

Because they know the real dirty little secret; America is a conservative nation.

Conservatives – as opposed to Republicans – outnumber liberals in every single state:

According to new data released by Gallup on Friday, conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states–including President Obama’s home state of Illinois–even though Democrats have a significant advantage over Republicans in party identification in 30 states.

“In fact, while all 50 states are, to some degree, more conservative than liberal (with the conservative advantage ranging from 1 to 34 points), Gallup’s 2009 party ID results indicate that Democrats have significant party ID advantages in 30 states and Republicans in only 4,” said an analysis of the survey results published by Gallup.

“Despite the Democratic Party’s political strength– seen in its majority representation in Congress and in state houses across the country–more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal,” said Gallup’s analysis.

So it’s in the GOP’s advantage – Lori Sturdevant’s caterwauling notwithstanding – to provide the people an alternative, rather than reinforcement, to the Dems.

Which is why the media is constnatly pushing “moderates”.

“While Gallup polling has found this to be true at the national level over many years, and spanning recent Republican as well as Democratic presidential administrations, the present analysis confirms that the pattern also largely holds at the state level,” said Gallup. “

But what about the “Blue” States?

Conservatives outnumber liberals by statistically significant margins in 47 of the 50 states, with the two groups statistically tied in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts.”

Massachusetts, Vermont and Hawaii are the most liberal states, even though conservatives marginally outrank liberals even there. In Massachusetts, according to Gallup, 30% say they are conservative and 29% say they are liberal, a difference that falls within the margin of error for the state. In Vermont, 29% say they are conservative and 28% say they are liberal, which also falls within the survey’s margin of error for the state.  In Hawaii, 29% say they are conservative and 24% say they are liberal, which falls within the margin of error for that state.

DC, of course, is the exception.  Even without counting Congress and the White House staff.

…when the “convential wisdom” among the not-conventionally-wise was that “Dick Cheney ran the Bush administration?”

As in all things – remember Berg’s Seventh Law. 

Because Rahm Emanuel would seem to be the real thing:

The caricature of Mr. Emanuel as a profanity-spewing operative has given way to a more nuanced view: as a profanity-spewing operative with a keen understanding of how to employ power on behalf of a new president with relatively little experience in Washington.

Although relentlessly deferential to the president, Mr. Emanuel is clearly more chief than staff. While some predecessors husbanded their authority, lest it be diluted, friends said he believed the more someone used power, the more power that person had.

He knows how to pull all the levers of influence in Washington — raising money, mobilizing interest groups and harvesting the latest policy ideas from research groups. At the same time, his relentless campaign-style approach sometimes leaves some colleagues worried they spend too much time reacting to events.

The whole thing is worth a read.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these blog memes.

This one is via the random Candice.

Bold means “Mission Accomplished”.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink – I did it once.  My two friends and I were the only two people there.  I made a big show of yelling “A round for the whole house!”  Bartender was not amused.
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula – it was a MN Zoo thing.
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said ‘I love you’ and meant it
09. Hugged a tree – mainly to show that I was a uniter, not a divider.
10. Bungee jumped – Um, no.  I’ll parachute before I bungee jump.
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea – My time on the English Channel was cloudless and smooth as glass.  Indeed, every time I’ve been to a traditionally rainy, dank place – Seattle, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, London – it’s been unseasonably sunny.  It must be me.
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg – Well, not at sea, anyway.
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper – I calculated that I changed about 9,000 of them.
21. Taken a trip on a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Got drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse – Sorta.  I had a system where if I figured a horse would win, I bet “place” just to be safe.   I made a bit of money at it.
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse – a partial one, anyway, back in tenth grade.
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run – In softball?  A few.  Including one against WCCO in media league softball back in 1986.  Glory days…
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking – It’s been a while.
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was s**tfaced – it may have been my college minor.
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country – In a club in Köln, Germany.  And on a ferry between Harwich and Hoek Van Holland.  And in a bar in Edinburgh.  And at a party in a little village north of Amsterdam.  I should point out that I really discovered beer when I was in Europe…
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving – Someday!
51. Visited Ireland – my budget ran out before I could try.
52. Been heartbroken for longer than when you were in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your cds
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke – “You’re the only guy I’ve met who has the b*lls to do “Born to Run”.”
59. Lounged around in bed all day – Never.
60. Posed nude in front of strangers – not that I remember.
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites – The Hjemkomst counts, right?  No, seriously – all sorts of ’em, including Augusta Raurica, near Basel (amazing Roman ruins) and a ton of ’em in the UK and Scotland.
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight – Have I mentioned the lengths we had to go to to kill time in college in North Dakota if you didn’t have a girlfriend or much of a social life?  Although in my defense, I haven’t played D&D since the summer after high school.  I’ve done Traveller and Twilight 2000, though…
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie  – I did audio for a really crummy indie production back in 1988.
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days – Once, I had some strange, nonspecific fever.  Between Sunday and Thursday, I had two enchiladas and four soda crackers.  I think that counts.
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo – never will.
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert” – Does radio count?
83. Got flowers for no reason – I’ve gotten ’em for a reason – twice, I think.
84. Performed on stage – dozens of times, maybe hundreds.  Many plays, many many bands, not a few solo gigs on guitar, and a ton of gigs with orchestras (cello)  and concert (percussion) and stage and pit (guitar) bands.
85. Been to Las Vegas – I have almost no interest in this.
86. Recorded music – Why, yes.  At home, and in the studio.
87. Eaten shark
88. Had a one-night stand – people do lots of dumb things after they get divorced.
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship – I’m sure a North Sea ferry doesn’t count…
94. Spoken more than one language fluently   – “Fluently” is a big word – but I spoke German well enough that nobody made me as a Yank. I think they thought I was Dutch.  And I spoke bad Dutch and French with a German accent, so they thought I was German…
95. Performed in Rocky Horror – as in “yelled on cue for the various parts of the movie”, or “dressed up”?  I did the former.  But I bet that’s not what they’re talking about…
96. Live in a foreign country, even for a brief time
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Created and named your own constellation of stars
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country  – Dunno how “exotic” it was; I rode from Uitgeest to Haarlem and, later, from Grave to Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over –  Well, to “start” more than “start over”.
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived.
105. Wrote articles for a large publication – Define “large”?
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback – Not a “flashback”, but while they were having a very dissociative episode, yes.
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced – never voluntarily.  Never will.
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol – many of them, including – twice – full-automatic.
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours – when I had the aforementioned fever.
123. Visited non-US foreign countries – Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, the UK and Canada.
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school – for a class or two.
131. Parasailed
132. Petted a cockroach – if by “pet” you mean “stomp”?
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions – Tough one.  I will crawl across broken glass to make my high school reunions.  But I haven’t been to any college ones.
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream – Briefly.
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146: Dyed your hair
147: Been a DJ – KEYJ, KDAK, KQDJ, KDWB AM/FM, and a zillion crappy bars.
148: Shaved your head
149: Caused a car accident
150: Saved someone’s life – Not sure that I’d be quite that dramatic.  I’ve called the ambulance for several people who were sick, had had accidents, or were passed out on the street over the years.

For eight years during the Bush Administration, we saw an endless parade of left-leaning pundits decrying the “incivility” in American politics – especially the “hate” hiding in the rhetorical bushes on talk radio. 

Now, I am not, nor have I ever been, one of those people who whinges about how “politics is the nastiest it’s ever been”; the 1824 election pretty well takes that cake, and 1928 and 1932 were no walks in the park.

And it’s not like casual defamation has never cropped up its ugly head; Hillary Clinton famously wrote all opposition to her husband off to a shadowy “vast, right wing conspiracy”.  It was a dumb, clumsy, incoherent effort that ended up backfiring, albeit not in a big way. 

But I’m not aware of a sitting administration that has ever tried to systematically portray its entire opposition as depraved and anti-American – indeed, anti-human – ever.

And for a movement that spent eight years wetting its pants about “civility”, it’s an interesting switch.

It’s a predictable one, of course.  The Obama Campaign, trained as it was in the Saul Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” school of campaigning, has absorbed most of the biggest, ugliest lessons from its radical forebears:  make it personal, do whatever it takes to separate the target from their supporters, and don’t let little things like facts get in the way of sliming the opposition.  And I certainly don’t recall a conservative doing any such thing to a Democrat.

(“But wait!  What about Limbaugh?  He makes everything personal!”  Well, no – Limbaugh’s an entertainer, not the voice of the GOP.  And I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who claims to get the vapors over Limbaugh but is fine with Keith Olbermann or James Carville).

(“But what about the Swiftboaters!”  Look – you can believe them or you can disbelieve them – I happen to believe them, obviously, and for good reason – but if you can’t see the difference between attackign a candidate over a point of fact, rightly or wrongly, and attacking an entire class of people, then you truly belong in the Dem party).

Still, over this past week it sorta came home here in the Twin Cities.

• On Sunday’s At Issue, DFL operative Blois Olson said that Tea Partiers were “Birthers” – people who believe that Barack Obama doesn’t meet the citizenship requirements to be President.  To kype a line from Walt Whitman, I refute Olson thus; I attended a Tea Party, and I spoke at another one, and I’ll be speaking at at least one more – and I’m not a birther.  Not at all.  I don’t suspect more than one in ten people at these rallies gives the “Birther” conspiracy the faintest credence.
• On Ron Rosenbaum’s show over the weekend, Pat Kessler, the (media cliche alert) Dean of Minnesota Political Reporters, claimed that opponents of the President’s healthcare proposal are motivated by “racism”.

If you believe that the Obama campaign administration, and especially its tactical brain trust, are taking their cues from Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”, it makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that they seem to believe people are going to sit still and take that kind of mass defamation lying down.

Do they believe that people are going to sit back and let the “elites” call all of us racists?  That we’re going to take “swastika” and “nazi” references in exchange for exercising our God-given right to participate in Democracy?  That we’re all going to get labelled with the dumbest conspiracy meme since “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?”

That we’ll not spend a few years showing the American people about the real, abiding racism that drives the Dems’ approach to education and social welfare?  Or the whole “Royalty Vs. Peasants” nature of Obamacare, the Education system and so many of the left’s other sacred cows?  How the left systematically attacks things like charter schools and vouchers – minority parents’ only escape valves from the current, broken system?  The number of Dems who believe that 9/11 was an inside job?  The ones who still furtively grump that Bill Burkett was right, and Dan Rather wronged?

The number of Democrats who put their kids in private schools while voting against school choice?  The Democrats’ custom-built escape hatch from socialized medicine for them and their union benefactors?

Are you sure you wanna tie your politics to casual group defamation?

Good grief, I hope not. It’s getting old.

…I get an email or comment related to this blog that just makes my day.

Two years ago, in conjunction with the dedication of the Minnesota World War II memorial, I wrote a piece about the 99th Infantry Battation (Independent), a unit of Norwegian-Americans and Norwegian immigrants from the upper Midwest recruited as the spearhead of a potential invasion of Norway.

This morning, a veteran of the 99th left a comment in the post.

Here’s part of it:

 I worked in 99th headquarters often as Company “A”s clerk, I am an expert on the 99th Viking Battalion.

Of course, you can’t get two Norwegians together without having one of these: 

Our Commander for most of our existance was Harold D. Hansen. NOT HANSON!

Sorry – it was misspelled in the source I copied.

Still…: 

He was Captain when we formed, promoted to Major and when the regular army Lt. Colonel Robert Turner was severly wounded after having come in above Hansen about 12 months earlier. Hansen was given field battle promotion to Lt. Colonel resuming command of the 99th.

Read the whole thing if you get a moment.

And thanks, Cpl. Hanson.

Twentysomething cops on the Jersey Shore have no idea who Bob Dylan is:

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.

A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.

“I don’t think she was familiar with his entire body of work,” Woolley said.

“Oh, hey, Angela – isn’t he da guy from da Victoria’s Secret ads?”

Just a quick note:  Jeff Horwich interviewed me for last week’s installment of In The Loop, which has evolved into one of the flagship productions of MPR’s web presence.  Jeff and I talked about conservatives’ reticence about participating in the census, following on Rep. Bachmanns’ rather famous declaration that she plans on not participating in the next one.

I’m  near the beginning – the “Big Brother is Watching” segment on the really slick little graphic episode navigator (note to self…).  Give the whole broadcast a listen.

America stepped up and took the wind out of the sails of the Obama administration’s plan to socialize America’s health care system.

It was not Republicans nor Blue Dog Democrats that derailed Jimmy II’s grand plan – credit this one to vociferous citizens exercising their rights, rescuing America from the brink of yet another irreversible government entitlement, and indicating a potential mid-term rout of Democratic ranks nationwide if they didn’t reverse course.

Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Barack Obama’s administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.

It was never intended to be an option.

Meanwhile, Obama gets off the gas and on the back-pedal.

“All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Obama said at a town hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colo. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”

I think he said that just as he spied a cream pie with his name on it in the crowd.

No matter how liberal Dems spin this, it is a sound and stinging defeat in the wake of a Democratic super-majority.

The plan now may be to create a member-run non-profit option to compete with private insurers.

…but that may be moot. It may be more over than Obama is willing to concede at this juncture.

On the same day that a Cabinet member signaled the administration’s willingness to forego inclusion of a public health insurance option in the final version of health care reform legislation, a Texas Democrat who is also a registered nurse suggested that the public option might be a deal breaker for at least some House Democrats.

So much for Change^®.

More to come…

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

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is out, and we’ll be up from 1-3.  Today, we’ll be talking about the new Obama As Victim meme.  We’ll also be talking with scientist and Global Warming skeptic Peter Singer.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King is up next, dishing his own personal brand of conservative hurt from 3-5.  Check it out.
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

Monday:  “If they punch, punch back twice as hard!”

Friday: “Can’t we all just get along?”

Trying to lower the temperature of the health care fight, President Barack Obama on Friday denounced news media emphasis on angry protesters at town-hall meetings.

Obama ventured west for the latest of his own town hall-style events, fielding polite but occasionally tough questions — one man declaring the president couldn’t pay for his plan without raising taxes. Tieless and rolling up his sleeves in campaign mode, Obama pitched his overhaul plan to a crowd in an airport hangar near Bozeman.

The president didn’t deny that there have been angry outbursts by foes of his plan at town halls featuring Democratic lawmakers this month. But he said that was hardly the whole story.

“TV loves a ruckus,” Obama said. “What you haven’t seen on TV and what makes me proud are the many constructive meetings going on all over the country.”

If you fight by Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, don’t be suprise if Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals get used against you.

I was biking on a Three Rivers bike trail in and around my home in Hennepin County today and came upon some young workers building a little area of stairs onto the biking/walking trail from a park.

They had arrived in an official Hennepin County van, so I would have to assume that they were county workers.

Posted proudly near their little project was a sign:

“Your Stimulus Dollars at Work”

Government workers, working on government land, on a government project. Dare I say an unnecessary one at that.
Riddle me this: Just exactly what stimulus was this project providing?

How many sustainable private sector jobs, the only source of true economic growth, were created?

With yesterday’s passing of Les Paul, there was really only one option for Hot Gear Friday today.

I wrote this piece about 18 months ago:

It’s a ’57 Gibson Les Paul Standard, one of perhaps the three most sought-after electric guitars in the business. I recall reading that they went for $279, brand new out of the Gibson catalog, during Ike’s second term. When I first started playing guitar during the Carter administration – before the guitar collectors market went insane – they were already going for a stellar $3,000; thirty years later, some of them fetch mid-to-high five figures.

The tiger-stripe lacquer finish and the brick-heavy body create an afternoon’s worth of sustain. The action, like most Gibsons, is nice and low; your fingers just race, which is disconcerting to a Fender player like me. Even thirty years ago, the whole assembly – aged nicely even then – yielded a sweet, round, weathered tone that was the tonal equivalent of James Earl Jones’ voice; it had credibility just because of how it sounded.

I played a ’57 once – not a tiger-stripe, but a Gold-Top, its first cousin – that a friend of the bass player in my very first band had picked up ten years earlier for maybe $100, before the collectors value became established. I’d been playing guitar for maybe two years; I had a long way to go. And yet strapping that bad boy on was like sitting in an F1 Lotus after learning how to drive a combine; it’s hard not to feel like a guitar hero playing a ’57.

The Standard is the iconic representative of the line, but “Les Paul” is to guitars as “Europeans” is to people; there are many different varieties, some of them very dissimilar.

There was the Custom…:

…which added a pickup (usually) and a bunch of extra ivory, and switched to a mahogany rather than maple top, giving a mellower tone (which has translated to lower values on the collector market).

There’s the Deluxe…:

…originally with either mini-humbucker or P90 pickups, which didn’t really take off.

The Les Paul Studio…:

…which was a high-end “just the basics” version aimed at studio musicians, omitting the ornamentation and binding but going high end on the body construction and electronics.  Playing a Studio is an interesting experience; it handles like, well, a high-end Les Paul.  But there’s something about guitar marketing; while it probably played the same as a Standard, there was something that just felt – emotionally, not physically – downmarket.  There’s something about the whole “Les Paul Experience” that’s as much look as sound.

Of course, I always preferred them to the Juniors…:

who certainly have their adherents (Billy Joe Armstrong, Paul Westerberg), but always felt thick and unresponsive to me, a Fender guy.

With all the mythology based around the Les Paul, it’s hard to realize that Gibson was actually losing market share to Fender and their lighter, less-expensive Stratocaster.  To the threat, they responded with the SG – basically a lighter, thinner body with a double-cutaway body:

I never cared for them – I always liked my Ibanez knockoff better – but they did sell like hotcakes.  Looking at video clips of seventies bands, SGs were everywhere.
But it’s the Les Paul that is the rock and roll icon – from the sixties,

…the seventies…

…the eighties…

…nineties…

…well, you get the picture.

Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives is in the Goober race.

The Entenza campaign has tried very hard to develop an air of inevitablity — that he is going to be the DFL candidate for Governor. MAK’s candidacy is a bowling ball off an overpass for the Enetenza 18-wheeler and right now I’d have to speculate that she will be the DFL endorsed candidate for Governor (catch the edit at the end) [in which Broom fudges his prediction a bit].With the entrance of the Speaker and the expected entrances of the mayors in the next few months, the long summer Entenza has had to develop momentum and image will be quickly coming to a close.

It’s game time.

Please, Democrats, I beg of you – nominate her.  Nominate a hard-line tax and spender.  Nominate a woman who put Cy Thao’s classic dictum, “when you guys win, you get to keep your money.  When we win, we take your money” into action with every breath she took on Capitol Hill.

Endorse a woman who couldn’t compromise enough to squeedge a budget past a governor that was outnumbered two houses to none.

Endorse someone whose main qualification for office is “she’s less mind-warpingly camera-hostile than Larry Pogemiller”.

I beg of you.  Endorse her.

That is all.

I’ve been grappling with a theological conundrum.  Perhaps you can help me.

Is God so omnipotent that he could invent a phrase so stupid that even Fast Eddie Schultz wouldn’t say it?

Liberal radio talk show host says right-wing talkers and conservatives want to see Obama “get shot.”

I’m a person of faith, but if God’s limits could possibly be tested, this is it.

Because if “Stupid” were a church and a theology, Schultz would be its doctinally-infallible pope.

Last year, when the Strib went through its big show of cost-cutting in the Columnist Corner at Strib Tower, some of us dared to hope that with Nick Coleman being eased out (maybe), things might change.  That the “city columnist” slot might turn into something other than a relentless shill space for the DFL.

But then they brought in Jon Tevlin.  In other words, same old thing.

How little have things changed?  Read yesteday’s piece.  Everything we grew to know and “love” about Coleman? The selective omission of context?  The bending of facts to fit a poltical agenda?  The “say something outrageous, secure in the knowledge that I know stuff and the peasants daren’t gainsay me!” school of opinion writing?

It’s all still there.

Oh, it starts out benignly enough:

Why do our children always disappoint us? We spend 18 years carefully teaching and molding our kids, hoping they avoid the mistakes we made, praying they become upstanding, hard-working adults…Still, we lecture: Join the Army, don’t join the Army. Become a doctor, not a teacher. And for heaven’s sake, don’t go into journalism.I heard that one, and like many kids, ignored the wisdom of my parents.

Because newspaper journalism has always been the career equivalent of wearing a nose ring?I digress; Tevlin is writing about the decision by Harrison Bachmann – son of Representative Michele Bachmann, CD6 congresswoman and target of the left’s most unseemly permanent rage – to join “Teach for America”, an affiliate of “Americorps”.

Maybe it’s the Lord’s way of keeping the world upright?…So it has to sting right now for Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Here’s what Bachmann said about President Obama’s plan to expand AmeriCorps, a program that puts young adults to work making the world a better place by teaching disadvantaged kids and helping the poor:

“[It’s] under the guise of quote, volunteerism, but it’s not volunteers at all,” she said on the Sue Jeffers radio show in April. “It’s paying people to do work on behalf of government. There are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people get trained in the philosophy the government puts forward and then they have to go work in these politically correct forums.

“As a parent, I would have a very, very diffiult time seeing my children do this.”

In other words, Tevlin sees this as Harrison sticking a thumb in Mom’s eye.  Why?  Because it fits the template; Jon Tevlin and everyone he knows hates Michele Bachmann and everything she stands for; therefore, everyone must hate her, and everything Rep. Bachmann does must be suffused with perfidy.
Really.  Everything.  Including the workings of her family life – because we all know that the family of every family-values-flogging Christian Conservative, especially the women, look more like an episode of Moral Orel than anything like the rest of our lives!  Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant!  Larry Craig – wide stance wide stance wide stance hahahahahahah!  And Harrison Bachmann has signed up with something Michele criticized!:

The last application deadline was in February, and successful candidates were notified within two months, according to Kerci Marcello Stroud, national communications director of TFA.So when Bachmann issued her screed, her son might have already been accepted, and certainly would have applied. Ouch.

<>“Ouch”.  Because of course any decision Harrison makes just has to be a political dagger aimed at his mother’s heart.  Just like young Jon mortified his parents by becoming a newspaper reporter.  It all fits!Except that it doesn’t.  Listen to the Jeffers broadcast.  I transcribed the relevant part – badly, but it should give you the right idea:

The original language of the bill was “Mandatory service” for government. right now, the language is voluntary, but just last week a Democrat colleague introduced language to make it mandatory. I believe when it’s all said and done that there’s a very real chance that young people could be put into mandatory service, and there’s a real concern that there are provisiions for what I’d call “re-education camps” for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosphy that the govenrment puts forward, and then they have to go and work in some of these politically correct forums…it appears there’s a political agenda behind all of this, and if young poeple are mandated to go into this, I’d have a very, very difficult time watching my children do this. Again, it’s a huge power grab, and at a cost of billions of dollars.

Listened to in context, it’s fairly clear that it’s not “volunteerism”, much less the volunteers or the jobs they do, that Bachmann is attacking; it’s the politicization of the program.  She would hate to see her, or anyone’s, children used as raw material in a politicized compulsory service scheme.

Which the Democrats want to make it.

In the future.

Thank you, Harrison, for your service. Here’s hoping you inspire kids to dream, and get inspired in the process.

Who knows, maybe you’ll even have an opportunity for a teaching moment with some political leaders, but I doubt it.

And who knows, Harrison; maybe you can teach a high school journalism class.  Where you can teach young kids to get their facts straight and refrain from superimposing their mindsets onto other people, in order to skew and caricature them.  But I…

…no, that would be a cheap shot, wouldn’t it?

It’s interesting, listening to this 1961 speech by Ronald Reagan, how long the idea of socialized medicine/”single payer healthcare” has been knocking around.  He even notes the old “What would you do – throw senior citizens out in the streets” which, being alive in the 1980’s, I thought started in the 1980’s.

And while pining for the old days is a deadly narcotic, it’s amazing to listen to not only how eloquently Reagan trashes the idea, but with with a level of literate details.  They say American’s attention spans are shorter than they used to be – but on this sort of thing?

Anyway – worth a ten minute listen.

How used am I to getting six hours of sleep a night?

Last night, for the second time in a week, I got to bed at 9:45.  And for the second time, I popped awake at 3:45.

And that’s what Les Paul did. 

The legendary guitarist, and even more legendary inventor, passed away today at age 94 from complications to a case of pneumonia – but not before winning a Grammy for an album recorded when he was already past 90.

His big contributions, of course, came 50 and 60 years ago:

As an inventor, Paul helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the “tracks” in the finished recording.

With Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records and 11 No. 1 pop hits, including “Vaya Con Dios,” “How High the Moon,” “Nola” and “Lover.” Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul the inventor had helped develop.

“I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished,” he recalled. “This is quite an asset.” The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.

“Overdubbing”, as well as the multi-track recording technology that Paul helped pioneer, arguably was one of the most important facets in creating the production style that has dominated popular music (of all genres, from rock to R’nB to country to rap to whatever) for the past 45 years; it changed recording music from an essentially technical, almost secretarial exercise of placing mikes and recording performances into a self-contained art form of its own, limited less by the performance than by the producer’s imagination.

Of course, among musicians he’s most famous for his eponymous guitar:

 Paul was working on solid-body guitars in the late 1940’s, experimenting about the idea of trying to get more “sustain” from a note – to make the tone ring as long as possible.  He figured bright and early that the mass of the guitar was the key factor in retaining the vibrations that made a guitar old a note.  He famously wired a pickup and a string/head/tail combination onto a railroad tie and, as he related it, plucked a note, went out to lunch, and came back to find the note still ringing.

He worked from there:

Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist – whatever.

And it worked; legendarily so.  The Les Paul in its many styles did for the electric guitar what dubbing did for recording; revolutionized it. 

What a life!  Think about it; doing what he loved (playing music, tinkering with instruments) and doing it well not only made him a living, but left behind a legacy that pretty much everyone in both fields will owe a debt to forever.

Hard to beat that!

RIP, Les Paul.

Well, the verdict (throwing out all the votest for “crashing Drinking Liberally”) was pretty decisive.  People want the MOB Summer Party moved to September 12.

So moved it shall be!

Location to be officially announced later.

Again – please RSVP to either the comment section, or to the email address “feedbackinthedark” over at yahoo.com.

Minnesota came close to repealing its decade-and-a-half old ban on nuclear power plants in the last session; the Senate approved the repeal, and it failed in the House by about a dozen votes.

A new group, spanning some unlikely bedfellows, has spawned to Ctry to fix the problem:

A coalition of business, labor and environmental leaders has joined a new nonprofit organization to advocate repeal of Minnesota’s ban on new nuclear power plants.

Three veteran Republican operatives organized the group, Sensible Energy Solutions for Minnesota, but on Tuesday they announced formation of a bipartisan board of advisers that represents a wide range of interests.

I’m going to try to book some of these people on the NARN one of these weekends.  Minnesota’s “moratorium” – a culmination of years of paranoia about plants and waste in the nineties – is a vestige from a time of cheap energy and cheaper solutions to vexing issues. 

It’ll be most interesting, as Cap and Trade promised to jack up heating bills enough to make Minnesota too expensive to live in for anyone making less than $60,000 year, to see the defenses the left comes up for this “moratorium”. 

 …may live this down. 

But not if King and I can help it.

Hm.  Things must be getting dicey for the Administration and the Democratic Party…

…because they and their proxies are finding enemies under rocks.  Almost literally, as it happens:

Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends.

Like we couldn’t see that one coming.

And – I’m almost afraid to ask – why?

The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise…

What?

So we’re finding racists under rocks?

What group is making these claims?

…the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center …

Ah.  There ya go.  The SPLC needs bad whiteys with guns the way car dealerships need clunker programs.

As

Today’s my mother’s birthday. 

Mom is, of course, my polar opposite on most thing; I suspect if she hadn’t been married with three kids in 1968, she might very well have been a hippie.  She certainly gives off that vibe today.  I still don’t think she tells any of her friends that her oldest son is a conservative talk show host.

But happy birthday, Mom! 

Have you ever had the experience of reading a book when, suddenly, you realize you’re no longer doing it because you like it but rather to see just how bad it’s going to get? Ever talked back to a book the way MST3K‘s Tom Servo talks back to a bad movie?

I’ve had that experience recently reading Conn Iggulden’s Emperor: The Gates of Rome. The book purports to be “A Novel of Julius Caesar.” And it kind of is, in the sense that it features a protagonist of that name who lives in the vicinity of some ancient city called Rome. After that you kind of have to take Iggulden’s word for it that he’s writing about THE Julius Caesar because it reads more like Luke Skywalker meets Gladiator as pictured by Michael Bay. It decidedly does not read like the life of the historical man who conquered Gaul, bedded Cleopatra, and inspired Shakespeare to write a play about him sixteen centuries later. Which is not to say it lacks redeeming value. I place great value in laughter after all.

(more…)