More trouble on the horizon for The Great Society part deux: After thinking it over, many people are coming around to the notion that the current health care system may not be so bad after all.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% rate it as poor.

These figures reflect a significant increase in support for the health care system over the past few months. In May, just 35% of adults nationwide rated the system as good or excellent. A year ago, just 29% of Likely Voters rated the system in such positive terms.

The new polling also shows that 80% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent. That’s up from 70% in May.

Bolding mine, and it’s a doozy. President Obama and his Congressional groupies launched into a bold initiative to reform the nation’s health care system under the premise that people wanted… ahem… change. But how much “change” will really be tolerated by people who already find their health care coverage as, at worst, “good”?

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While nobody’s issued an official explanation for why KTLK-FM – the Twin Cities’ Clear Channel talk station – decided to tube all their weekend talk shows in favor of an endless stream of music that sounded like the “Classic Rock” playlist on someone’s IPod, I think I know why.

The Northern Alliance beat them.

While the 100,000 watt FM juggernaut sports Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Jason Lewis during the week, even they were not enough to put KTLK-FM over the top against the 5,000-watt AM1280 The Patriot on the all-important weekend time slot.  Against lavish expenditures on talent, salaries and promotions, AM1280 not only continued to clobber KTLK on the bellwether weekend time slots, but expanded their lead.

AM1280’s lineup – led by the Northern Alliance Radio Network (NARN) – continues to clobber the ratings of the much larger stations in head-to-head competition.  KTLK’s retreat is only the latest confirmation.

From this point, the question isn’t so much “why did KTLK put their 100,000 watt tail between their legs and scurry from the weekend talk market”.  It’s “how long will WCCO and KSTP-AM take to do more or less the same?”   WCCO’s 50,000 watts lumber along, and KSTP would do better running “Soucheray and Reusse Sportstalk” reruns than whatever it is they’re doing now.

Yes.  Yes, it is good to be king. 

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Before I get rolling with the real posting here, I thought I’d provide a brief personal introduction to the Shot in the Dark readership who may have no idea who I am.

I’ve been a blogger in the Minnesota blogging scene since July of 2004. I was one of a small but plucky cadre of conservative bloggers who came onto the scene following in the footsteps of the Northern Alliance of Blogs. I met Mitch around about the same time, via links and comments at first and eventually at some of the many Minnesota Organization of Blogs gatherings. As one of the few who remained unintimidated by his large frame, gregarious personality, and tendency to burst into a spontaneous bagpipe arrangement of Springsteen’s “Nebraska” album without explanation at times, I must have made a favorable impression.

Not so long ago, as I was considering closing down my own blog (the very recently late Bogus Gold), Mitch extended me the invitation to move my blogging operations over here under the SITD banner. I was more than happy to agree.

A few words about the person behind the moniker: I’m 40 years old, married, with three children. I live in the frightening reaches of the Twin Cities metro where even Mitch fears to tread (i.e. the suburbs). I hold a degree in anthropology, but make a living as an IT business analyst. I have a passion for the theater, heirloom tomatoes, wine, food, music, and history… as well as more ordinary blogospheric passions like politics, global warming cooling climate change, and general snarkery.

Thanks to Mitch for the opportunity to join the party here. I’ll try not to wreck the place.

The bad news:  “Bogus Doug” Williams is shutting down Bogus Gold.

Which is a bit of a whack upside the local blog scene’s head.  BoGo has always been a great place for high-quality writing that doesn’t always mine the same topics, over and over again. 

He’s got the same reasons an awful lot of solobloggers have for backing out:

Surveying the scene now it’s a lot different than it was. It looks to me like the era of the small personality driven “boutique” blog, covering all the topics that may interest an individual blogger of no particular celebrity, is coming to an end.

This may not be an entirely bad thing. The ending of this particular blog era seems to stem from the availability of so many more options for doing that sort of thing than used to exist. You no longer need to set up your own personal blog to share all your interests and thoughts with the world. There’s Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other new social media which are better designed around individual personalities, and do a much better job connecting you to people who may care about what you have to say. I’ve tried them out myself, and while they don’t seem to suit me as well as a good old blog, I can definitely see their appeal and suitability for the things they’re made for.

This is a long way of saying I’ve decided to shut down this blog.

OK – the good news?  Doug will be blogging here at Shot In The Dark.  I made Doug the same offer I made Johnny Roosh about a year ago; “it’d be a shame to see you not blogging; do whatever you want at Shot, whenever you want.  Once a month, once a day, whatever”.  I’m happy to say Doug accepted.

I guess that means we need a staff meeting…

I was glad to see that the families of the 35W bridge collapse victims Enixed the idea of a formal memorial service to commemorate Saturday’s second anniversary of the disaster:

Officials wisely decided not to hold a public ceremony today — the second anniversary of the collapse — saying relatives of the victims and others tied to the event wanted to move on with their lives. They should have that opportunity.

Of course, there are some loose ends that do need to get cleaned up.

The Strib gets one of them right:

So, too, should the entire community be able to reclaim Bohemian Flats and to drive along the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis without being reminded of the horror of August 2007, when 13 people lost their lives a few hundred yards upstream.

The Flats are still being used to store all the steel wreckage from the salvage job; the various lawyers involved in the slew of lawsuits filed over the collapse (last Friday was the deadline for actions) want all the old girders preserved in case they need them.

Of course, the Strib missed one big mess of wreckage;the credibility of not a few local politicians and, lest we forget, the Strib itself.ater on Tim Pawlenty’s refusal to raise the gas tax?  When some backroom political flak literally claimed that the entire MNGOP should be indicted for murder?
Remember when Nick Coleman not only blamed the Taxpayers League, but haughtily blew off the National Transportation Safety Board’s initial findings when they disagreed with him?

None of them have copped to their ghoulish hijacking of a tragedy for their own gain.

Where is the decency?

Note to Congress: the people sent you to office, and they can bring your sorry tush home

From the Austin-American Statesman:Back in Central Texas while Congress is on a month-long recess, Congressman Lloyd Doggett faced an angry reception at a town hall meeting at an Austin Randalls store yesterday…A video of the event on YouTube shows many in the crowd showed up with signs denouncing President Obama’s proposed health care plan.

Witnesses say that when Doggett was asked if he would support the plan even if he found his constituents opposed it, Doggett said he would still support the plan.

I was about to write “remember – Obama’s only got one vote”.  But after the Gregoire/Rossi election and the Franken/Coleman thing, I’m not so sure, anymore.

But all of that notwithstanding, I think it’s still considered good form to pay some attention to what your constituents want.  For now.

As we discussed last winter, the left observes two different sets of rules for “protected classes”.  Women, for example; female politicians on the left are treated with a sort of victorian deference; conservative women, on the other hand, great treated like recalcitrant waitstaff at best, hookers under arrest at worst by the left’s chattering classes.

That much is a given.

But it sometimes the left’s distaste, even hatred, for cognitive dissonance even catches me off guard.

Given that the left has invested millions into creating a rumor factory about Sarah Palin, spawning off tales that are, inevitably, fake (but that don’t need to be true, since their only purpose is to serve as nattering points for the national chattering class, used to defame Palin while still technically following the rules “Journalists” are supposed to follow), it  shouldn’t surprise anyone that they are shopping a aTsourceless rumor that the Palins are getting divorced. 

Yestrday, we discovered the problem: Conservative bloggers don’t have “sources” the way progressives do. Take for instance, the highly influential blog called Immoral Minority, which has been rockin’ the Site Meter lately. Their secret? Sources:

Earlier this week one of my best sources claimed to have explosive new information for me . . .

According to my source Sarah is finished with Todd and has decided to end their marriage . . .

As for the babygate story . . . my sources are still working on it, and the information is becoming more accessible . . .

It’s all about ”sources,” you see. Which is a big problem for conservative bloggers, because for some reason we can’t get any sources with intimate details of the marriages of prominent Democrats.

It’s certainly possible ,not that the story gives us any reason to believe it; the kind of pressure the Palins are under – two very different careers, special needs child, pregnant teenage daughter – have broken up an awful lot of families.

Now, the rumor is hinky to the point that the normally-Palinphobic mainstream media isn’t playing ball with it yet.

The part that amazes me, though is not just the hostility that Palin engenders, but the hatred so many on the left feel for the whole notion of the close-knit, unapologetically Christian family.

A local “progressive” commentator, writing on Twitter (who shall remain nameless) wrote in re the rumors of the Palin divorce rumors:

I am betting on divorce among politicians who preach family values…Because often [“family values”]  are in direct contrast to having loving, open communication and a healthy marriage.

I’ve been astounded at two things, really:  that people on the left still use the term “family values” (we on the right mostly gave it up after it got turned into cheap-irony-fodder twenty-odd years ago, for starters, and then that so many on the left believe their own press about those that differ from them.  It’s been a Hollywood staple for a generation, now; the fundamentalist is dumb; the Christian couple is not just dysfunctional, but secretly depraved; the minister is the villain of the story.

Of course, it’s true – to the extent that it’s true for everyone;  “Family values people” are human, the same curse that faces everyone else; they are imperfect, given to “sin”, to grab a seemingly-appropriate term.  It’s just that it only seems to be tittering material when it’s someone whose worldview presses one to try to live better than that.

So I asked the person in question if she had anything, y’know, a little more empirical:

Archaic ideas about women’s roles bump up against reality/create conflict.

Which prompts the question: what “archaic ideas about women’s roles” are we talking about here?  Whatever you think about Sarah Palin’s politics, she’s hardly a latter day Barbara Billingsley.  She’s vastly more accomplished a person than the vast majority of her critics of either gender, on many levels; as a parent, as a politician, as a communicator.

I’m not sure what to chalk it up to:  conservative women (hispanics, blacks, etc) are targets for self-loathing hatred, or as a projection of the left’s worst traits.

As we approach the seventieth anniversary of World War II, I’ve found myself more and more fascinated by the stories of the people who left their conquered homelands to carry on the fight.

I’ve tried to imagine what that must be like; to see your homeland being brutalized, and to pack up and not only leave your home, family and life…

…but to do so not as a refugee, but as a soldier or sailor, to carry on a fight in perpetuity against absolutely no guarantee that it’d ever be rewarded, to eternally face the soldier’s risks of dying in some foxhole or ship compartment far from home, all the while knowing that everything and everyone you know is back “home”, under the thumb of a hideous  tyrant, waiting and praying for you to return with a few thousand friends to kick occupier ass.

People from all of the conquered nations fled their homes to fight on; hundreds of thousands of French repudiated the reputation for “cowardice” that history has slapped on their nation (more on that next June) and fled to England or Canada or North Africa to carry on the fight; Norwegians and Danes and Dutch and Belgians, Czechs and Hungarians and, later on, Italians and even a few Germans risked all to not only fight on, to risk all the usual horrors that stalk soldiers and the additional risk of being murdered as a “traitor” if captured.

And the most poignant of all the stories was that of the Poles.  A nation that craved independence from Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia for centuries, Poland was a nation for 21 years when the Germans and the Russians again swallowed it up with head-spinning brutality. Tens of thousands of Poles fled – via Romania to France,or via Russia through Iran through Africa to England.  They fought on for the next six years.

Among those refugees were the survivors of Poland’s small but highly-accomplished Air Force.  Poland from 1918 through 1939 was a bit like Israel from 1948-1968; surrounded by sworn enemies, it took fighting seriously, and it showed; Poland clobbered the Bolsheviks in 1920 – largely with the help of Poland’s fledgeling air force.  And so like the Israelis, the Polish Air Force was an elite; more highly-trained than any other pilots in Europe, the Poles gave the Luftwaffe worse than they got, even though they flew obsolete planes that should have been laughed from the skies (more next month, as we address the 70th anniversary of the invasion).  After Poland’s surrender, they fled to France – and then fled again as that nation collapsed, this time to the UK.

A Polish Air Force PZL fighter; the best in the world in 1932, a museum piece in 1939.

And, 69 years ago today, at the height of the Battle Of Britain, as Western civilization was pummeled against the ropes and hung on by the skin of its British teeth, the first dozen or so of these Polish refugee pilots were formed into 303 (Polish) Squadron of the Royal Air Force.

Pilots of 303 Sqn. and one of their Hurricanes during the Battle of Britain

These pilots – stone-cold killers who’d survived two debacles already – went into action at a time when the RAF was catastrophically short of pilots.  The Battle of France and the summer’s air battles over southern England had bled Fighter Command dry.  Replacement pilots were being thrown into combat straight out of flight school with less than a dozen hours of experience in their Spitfires and Hurricanes, and being mowed down in turn in droves; flying a fighter plane in combat is not a game for newcomers who get less training in their planes than kid gets on a shake machine at McDonald’s today.

A Polish pilot, a sergeant, climbs of of a Spitfire, later in the war.

So the Polish pilots, seasoned airmen and combat veterans that they were, were not only welcome, they were desperately needed.  And they delivered. They were credited during the Battle as the highest-scoring unit in the RAF, claiming 120 German aircraft destroyed in a 17 day rampage in September of 1940, the height of the Battle;

Battle-of-Britain-era endzone happy dance

The claims were lowered to 50-60 after the war, but that made them the fourth-highest-scoring squadron, and the best squadron flying the older Hawker Hurricane – and all in less than three weeks of furious fighting.  Used to flying obsolete Polish aircraft and, in some cases, underpowered and obsolescent French planes, they made the most of the modern, front-line Hurricanes they flew, pressing home attacks with a furious-but-professionally-precise ruthlessness that astounded their British comrades (as related by Squadron Leader Peter “Not The Guitar Player” Townsend in his classic personal history Duel of Eagles)

King George VI with pilots of 303 Sqn. immediately after the Battle.

And then they fought on throughout the war (ceding the title of “highest scoring squadron in the UK” to another exile unit, Norway’s 331 Squadron).

Shot of 303 Sqn. Spitfire with squadron mascot, “Misia”

But while the French, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgian, Danish and other western exiles got to go back to their homelands after the war, the Poles faced a communist dictatorship in their homeland. Some went back; many stayed in the UK (including the Polish Air Force exile who became the father of this guy) or moved to the US, Australia and Canada, where they waited 45 years for events (and, let’s be honest, Ronald Reagan, who is widely revered in Poland for his role in ending the Cold War and liberating Poland to an extent that’d amaze Americans  who’ve been duped by a generation of media disinformation on the subject) to finish the job they’d started in their youth.

Chavez, shown here with some of his friends.

More than a dozen of 34 radio stations ordered shut by the Venezuelan government went off the air on Saturday, part of President Hugo Chavez’s drive to extend his socialist revolution to the media.

Chavez defended the closures, calling them part of the government’s effort to democratize the airwaves.

President Obama’s reaction, or lack thereof will be quite telling over the next few days.

You’re welcome then.

Drive like a sheep, and you get stuck. Break some rules here and there for the good of traffic flow, and everyone benefits. A new traffic study by physicists at Sweden’s Umea University found that while we’re all taught to obey the traffic rules no matter what, doing so just makes for bottlenecks. Mix in some maverick drivers, however, and suddenly, logjams begin to ease as the percentage of drivers willing to pass on the right or zip past a pack of trundling cars on a two-lane actually help to keep the traffic flowing smoothly.

So those middle fingers are a solute to my service to road goers after all.

Last week, the conservative punditry lit up, discussed a brief series of rumors that popped up saying that Sarah Palin might be considering a run at the Talk Radio business.

There are some ups and downs to the idea (which, let’s be clear, is still only a rumor; further rumors claim that Clear Channel, which broadcasts Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity, has taken a pass on a syndicated Palin show). 

I think there are ten better plans out there for Sarah Palin (and am discussing them right now, 1:15PM Central Time, on the Northern Alliance Radio Network): 

10. Run for Senator from Alaska.  This is a bit of a gamble, in that it would traditionally imply that she’s giving up on 2012.  It’d be especially important for Palin; she’s already left one office early.  2012 is going to be a challenging time to run as a Republican – but as with all challenges, there are opportunities.  Does Palin run against an incumbent whose numbers are down now, but who could well bounce back big by 2012 (remember Reagan’s polling, which was dismal in 1982 but bounced back to landslide levels in 1984?), or wait until the nation is really ready for a change?  It’s a tough call.  That’s why it’s #10.

9. Start a blog.  She should be doing this anyway; if there’s a conservative pol out there who has the capacity to outflank the media the way Reagan did, it’s Sarah Palin.  If blogs had existed in 1980, I suspect Reagan would have had a great one.

8. Do a collection of frank, to the point Youtubes.  The model for this would be Milton Friedman’s classic 1979 PBS series “Free To Choose”, which sold conservatism and economic liberty to many of the unconverted (which means PBS will never ever let that happen again – hence Youtube).  Cover the big Palin issues – growth, liberty, prosperity – on her own terms, in her own way, playing to her strengths.  Quit relying on the mainstream media to do anything other than be in the bag for her opposition.

7. Talk Radio – Oh, what the heck.  But she should not do a three-hour-a-day show, like Limbaugh or Beck.  She should shoot for a one-hour daily show, or maybe a two hour weekend show.   Making fifteen compelling hours of radio a week  – easy as the good ones make it sound – is a lot of hard work.  It takes commitment – and Palin needs to commit to a higher calling than earning ratings.  But a one-hour daily, or two-hour weekend show is ideal for getting specific, focused messages out there, and taking just the right amount of positive and negative feedback from callers.  Each hour could be a major event in its own right.  And doing an hour of radio, especially with a solid support staff, is not that difficult.  Especially if Palin had a good sidekick.  Especially a sidekick with impeccable conservative credentials and lots of experience working with radio neophytes.  Ahem.

6. Get that book done.  Make sure it’s a doozy – as in, “less autobiography, more challenge to today’s status quo“.  Of course, some autobio

5. Big honkin’ speaking tour.  She showed during the campaign that she can work a room as well as anyone, and better than most.  She also showed, I think, that she needed to top the marquee; speaking in support of John McCain was like bailing in support of the Titanic, especially given the number of Mac’s staff that were actively sabotaging her.  Let her do the tour as the A-list, and let her – no, make her fail or, ideally, succeed on her own terms.

4.  Do what Reagan did; hundreds and hundreds of small speaking and commentary engagements.  Reagan’s gig as General Electric’s PR face was not only great exposure, but great training 

3. Sunday morning talk show.  Talk with Fox; nobody’ll be surprised that it’s a bald-faced showcase (because that’s what it needs to be), and one hour a week of mixing it up with the punditry can only be great training.

2. “The Opportunity Tour”.  Yes, it’s a takeoff on Robert Kennedy’s “Poverty Tour” (and Paul Wellstone’s cheap 1999 copy) – but the opposite way.  Where RFK (and PW’s) versions were tours of American failure, Sarah Palin’s tour would be a parade of seeming failures that are actual opportunities for the free market, for liberty, for the American way, by way of contrasting Palin (and conservatism) with the dismal reality of Obama’s lumpen socialism-lite.

1. Anything but announce her candidacy!

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 off on assignment.  I’ll be up next, from 1-3.  I’ll be talking with Don Vance from the General John Vessey charter school on the problems the Governor’s unallotment is going to cause charter schools.  And then, James Lileks joins us at 2PM!
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King is on 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 uploaded by Monday morning).
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

(Title via Johnathan)