It was thirty years ago that elections in the United Kingdom presaged an epochal change in American politics.  After three decades of Labour hegemony presiding over the sloughing off of the British Empire and the near-collapse of the British economy, Margaret Thatcher’s Tories swept into office, and spent the next decade first saving, then reviving Britain, and finally leading it back to the head of Europe’s economy.

A year later, Reagan did the same for America.

This year, we’ve been faced with the vision of the French president Sarkozy chiding Obama on his risible Iran policy.  Angela Merkel has extended the center-right lead in Germany.  Berlusconi isn’t going anywhere just yet.
Has the left hit a high water mark in Europe?

Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.

German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.

To this student of German and German history, the Sozialdemokraten‘s slow bleeding is wonderful to see.

Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.

Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its political agenda.

Of course, as has been noted elsewhere, “conservative” has always meant something a little different in Europe:

Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.

Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.

Which means European conservatives would be Blue Dogs by American standards, to be sure; it also means that the Euro left is even more insane than ours is.

Oh yeah – our left isn’t doing all that well either:

Though Democrats maintain an edge in party support over Republicans, Americans’ tendency to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party is lessening, coming down from the heights it reached near the end of the Bush administration. The changes in party support have been mainly among those who do not have a firm party commitment — those who initially identify as independents but express a leaning toward either of the major parties.

In fact, Gallup has found that independents are more likely to oppose than support healthcare reform, and to express concerns about increased government spending and the expansion of government power. Thus, the drop in Democratic support is partly a response to concerns about the policies Obama and the Democratic Congress are pursuing.

I’m feeling better about 2010 every day.

Tom Barnard is going to retire.

Eventually:

Tom Barnard, the most popular, powerful broadcaster in Twin Cities radio, announced Tuesday that he plans to quit his KQ92 morning program three years from now.”I just don’t fit into the show anymore,” Barnard said late Tuesday night. “The corporate climate is not what I signed up for.”

It’s possible Barnard meant it as a toss-off – but it caught my attention. 

Tom Barnard is a veteran of the classic radio industry; the “don’t pack a lunch, you probably won’t need one” world of bouncing up and down the dial, your employment subject not only to your own talent (Barnard’ always had it) but the whims and vagaries of a group of managers who largely got where they are because they’re deeply dysfunctional. 

That’s not a group slur, by the way; the skills required to succeed in major-market radio management  – especially among general managers and high-profile program directors – are often indistinguishable, to regular people, from personality disorders.  Major-market radio has always – at least in my cognitive lifetime – been like working for a bunch of hyperactive teenagers; results have to happen now; no excuses are accepted.  A new program director usually had a window of six months – sometimes a year, sometimes three months – to show big results, and had absolute power to get them, and no real impetus to expend much in the way of social grace or ethnical qualms about how they got them. 

That was in the seventies and eighties – the world Barnard is used to.

And now it’s getting bad!

(Disclosure:  Salem Radio, for whom I do the Northern Alliance program, is broadly an exception.  Most of the people I’ve dealt with at Salem Twin Cities have been fairly functional, complete people.  It’s almost like not being in radio at all…).

Barnard, 57, who for decades has dominated local morning radio like no other broadcaster in the country, casually mentioned retiring during Tuesday’s show, but he confirmed later in the day that it was a serious announcement.

I did kind of catch that when I had the show on in the bathroom yesterday morning.  I’d wondered if I’d heard that right.

I’m not sure what’s behind his decision.  I’d like to think that it’s because he’ll be sixty, he’ll be coming off a quarter century of dominating morning radio in a major market like nobody in modern radio history (not even Howard Stern has ever gotten the kind of numbers Barnard has gotten for almost a generation now), he’s socked away a ton of money, and he’s realized that big-market music radio is not just a treadmill, but these days is a treadmill on the lower decks of the Titanic, and he wants to do something he enjoys after a long, successful career.

Now, what will this mean, and what does it say, about the radio market in the Twin Cities?

More later this week.

Remember when photographing servicepeoples’ caskets coming back from the Middle East was the most important story on the media’s list?

No?

That’s OK – with Barack Obama in office, either does the media:

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“These young men and women are heroes,” Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. “The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong.”

Not to bag on the Administration; they at least followed through on one promise:

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.

But with no interest in tying an Administration for which they were utterly in the bag to the escalating cost of a war they’d never supported…?

But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. “It’s really fallen off,” says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. “The flurry of interest has subsided.”

That’s an understatement. When the casket bearing Air Force Tech. Sgt. Phillip Myers, of Hopewell, Va., arrived at Dover the night of April 5 — the first arrival in which press coverage was allowed — there were representatives of 35 media outlets on hand to cover the story…Fast forward to today. On Sept. 2, when the casket bearing the body of Marine Lance Cpl. David Hall, of Elyria, Ohio, arrived at Dover, there was just one news outlet — the Associated Press — there to record it. The situation was pretty much the same when caskets arrived on Sept. 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23 and 26. There has been no television coverage at all in September.

Now, it’s not like the war in Afghanistan is going anywhere soon.  Indeed, it looks like the Obama Administration is going to be to the country what Ike (at best) or LBJ (not at best) were to Vietnam (allowing in advance that historical parallels, especially about wars, are famously dicey).

So where’d the concern go?

Probably also resting in Crawford, Texas.  That’s my hunch.

Joe from the Como Park area writes:

Those videos of kids signing songs of praise and worship to Our Dear Leader have left a bunch of conservatives with their undies in a bundle.  Chill out, people.  Surely you remember the morning praises when you were a school child?

Right after the Pledge of Allegiance, we always sang “He Has A Secret Plan To Win The War” in honor of our President.  I especially loved the part where we shouted his name three times at the end:

Richard Milhous Nixon!
Richard Milhous Nixon!
Richard Milhous Nixon!  For the Future!  He’s the ONE!  YEAAAAAHHY!

Ah, good times.

Amazing, isn’t it?

It’s just like John Edwards said.

In one America, if you do something wrong, you (often) get arrested, tried, and if (hopefully) guilty, you get punished.

In another America, if you’re friends with big enough people, then your crimes aren’t really “crimes”.
Like if you are a good Saint Paul DFLer who was implicated in a murder in the seventies but have been an impeccable liberal worker-bee ever since.

Or if you have powerful and famous friends.

Behold modern “Feminism” at work:

[Whoopi] Goldberg, star of The Color Purple and Sister Act, said: “I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape.

“He pled guilty to having sex with a minor and he went to jail, and when they let him out he said ‘You know what, this guy’s going to give me 100 years in jail. I’m not staying’. And that’s why he left.” Polanski was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland on Sunday and faces extradition to the United States. He fled the US in 1978 before being sentenced for the crime and has been pursued around the globe by prosecutors ever since.

Someone needs to pass the word Polanski’s a Republican.  That’ll fix ’em.

An Al-Quaeda suicide bomber succeeds by  – not to make excessive light of the situation – doing what many red-blooded westerners would have encouraged him to do – sticking the bomb where the sun doesn’t shine:

Inside a Saudi palace, the scene was the bloody aftermath of an al Qaeda attack in August aimed at killing Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, head of Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism operations.

To get his bomb into this room, Abdullah Asieri, one of Saudi Arabia’s most wanted men, avoided detection by two sets of airport security including metal detectors and palace security. He spent 30 hours in the close company of the prince’s own secret service agents – all without anyone suspecting a thing.

How did he do it?

Taking a trick from the narcotics trade – which has long smuggled drugs in body cavities – Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum.

Upside:  comedy gold for Jon Stewart and Jay Leno.

Downside:  according to CBS, it’s currently un-screenable, short of giving cavity searches to airline passengers.

And as nosy as TSA can be, I don’t think even they wanna go there.

I’m not going to claim to be an expert on taxes or state funding.  Far, far from it.  I certainly don’t have the depth of knowledge or research that, say the folks at MN2020 have on the subject.

This subject, anyway.  (Charter schools?  They’re another story completely).

Anyway – MN2020’s Jeff Van Wychen responded to my critique of MN2020’s take on Local Government Aid last week.  And he made a few valid enough points; my interest in the subject (as opposed to, say that of charter schools) is, admittedly, more polemical than academic.  I claim no special expertise…

…which doesn’t take away from the overriding points; Minnesotans are taxed too much; our government spends too much; the system we have enables units of government to conceal and dilute that spending.  In some cases, that’s acceptable and even advisable.  In others?  Not so much.

Although Van Wychen’s reliance on the academic leads him down some strange corridors:

Mitch’s primary gripe is against the Minnesota Miracle, a major restructuring of the state-local fiscal relationship enacted in 1971.   In his screed against the Minnesota Miracle, Mitch blames it on “gigantistic DFLers and a Republican minority.”  In fact, Republicans held a majority in both the Minnesota House and Senate when LGA and the Minnesota Miracle were enacted.  Since 1971, many GOP state lawmakers have fought to preserve these reforms.  In short, the fingerprints on the Minnesota Miracle and LGA are bi-partisan.

Of course, the GOP – the “IR” through most of those years – was pretty indistinguishable from the DFL.  Remember – the “Reagan Revolution” came to Minnesota, or at least the MNGOP, almost two decades late.  “Limited government” was something to which the “IR” of Dave Durenberger and Arne Carlson paid unconvincing lip service, if any service at all.

So Van Wychen’s point is both correct, and doesn’t change mine at all; the “IR” that helped bring us the “Minnesota Miracle” practiced the same kind of “bipartisanship” the DFL still wants from Republicans; the kind where you go along with everything the DFL wants.

Mitch fails to mention an important fact about the Minnesota Miracle.  While it is certainly true that the Minnesota Miracle included a large increase in state revenue to local communities, the state also took local governments’ ability to levy sales taxes and placed limits on their ability to levy property taxes.  In short, the redistribution of resources that Mitch whines about was a mixed blessing for local governments.

What Jeff “fails to mention” – indeed, what Jeff “whines about” (Note to Mr. Van Wychen – down this road leads madness.  Turn around – Ed.) is that I didn’t “fail to mention it”, at least indirectly.

My claim – my big complaint about how the “Minnesota Miracle” and its detritus have manifested themselves over the past couple of decades – has been that it has been a shell game, allowing cities to conceal their spending by shuffling it up to the state level.

So if the “Blessings” were “mixed”, it was in that if you were a government that needed to spend more money than it had (say, tiny towns outstate with no tax base but serious improvement needs), or just wanted to (Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth), it allowed you to detach that spending from your taxation, spreading the pain and attendant desire for accountability far afield.   In exchange, the cities lost some ability to levy some local taxes – meaning they had to get creative about finding new ones.  And local governments are boundlessly creative at that.

But I digress.

Mitch disputes the fact that CPA cuts have been disproportionate.  During the entire span of the Pawlenty administration, real per capita state general fund spending is projected to decline by 16.9 percent.  (This decline is somewhat overstated due to the fact that some of the cut in state spending is being shifted or replaced by federal dollars.)  After the July unallotments, the cut in real per capita CPA over the same period is 51.4 percent—three times greater than the cut to the state general fund.  Only the ill-informed or the innumerate would dispute the fact that the cut to CPA has been disproportionate.

Ill-informed?  Perhaps.  Innumerate?  5 out of 4 times.

Disproportionate?  Yes.  And justifiably so.

Mitch appears to assume that county spending is driven entirely by local decisions.  Not so.  In addition to human service and corrections costs, counties must also implement state mandates in the areas of solid waste management and recycling, wetland mitigation, and burial of indigents, to name a few.  Given that state government imposes substantial costs on counties, it is incumbent on the state to provide the dollars to help pay for these costs.

Mitch’s defense of Pawlenty’s aid cuts would have some intellectual credibility if he was also calling for the elimination of state mandates on counties.

And Mr. Van Wychen’s call for my intellectual credibility would be more intellectually credible if he’d broken out how much of this local and county spending goes to social engineering projects…

No, Mr. Van Wychen, I’m all for rationalizing of state mandates on the counties.  Can’t say as it comes up at parties much, but since you bring it up, let’s go find that list and start slashing.

Deal?

Anyway, my complaints about the LGA system really break down to two things:

1. LGA is part of a complex shell game that diffuses accountability for local government spending, enabling local and county governments to hide their spending.
2. Timing notwithstanding, its part of the noxious Minnesota media myth about the “Minnesota Miracle”, which has become a rhetorical pipe-wrench that the “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota” crowd trots out to try to flog the myth that Minnesota isn’t over-taxed.

Van Wychen:

However, Mitch’s blog is silent on this subject.  To defend the massive cuts in state aid without also noting the role of state decisions in driving county costs is irresponsible.

[Closed-Circuit to audience:  Do you feel like you’re in a high school debate class?]

Rather than reducing state mandates, more costs have been shifted on to counties during the tenure of the Pawlenty administration.  For example, additional medical assistance and felony offender incarceration costs have been dumped on counties. This was done because it was easier for state leaders to shift their budget problems to counties rather than deal with them responsibly by increasing state taxes or by making deeper cuts to state spending.  Mitch might want to note these costs shifts the next time he chooses to preach about “accountability.”

Duly noted!

Of course, Jeff might want to check into the root causes for all of this corrections and social spending – which is a larger subject that I also didn’t address, which I’m sure is also irresponsible of me, but then Van Wychen didn’t either, so let’s call it a wash.

Local property taxes have increased not because of real growth in local budgets, but because state leaders have chosen to solve their budget problems disproportionately on the backs of counties and other local governments.

…by transferring spending that the counties and cities should be doing, fairness of any mandates notwithstanding, back to the local and county government!

And therein lies the problem: for all the pearl-clutching of partisan, pro-spending pundits like MN2020’s stable of tax paladins, spending has been growing in Minnesota, vastly faster than inflation, in good times and in bad.  When times are good, the DFL wants to spend the (temporary) surpluses; when times are bad, the DFL wants to raise taxes, so that government wants for nothing.

You can niggle about with where any given dollar goes and how it gets there; the main issue is that there are so many more of them being spent, and the DFL wants to take so many more of them from you and I (and then launder them through a system designed to obfuscate where they come from and what they go to).

In a bit of a digression, Mitch asserts that the prosperity that Minnesota enjoyed in recent decades would have likely occurred “without government intervention.”  In the same paragraph, Mitch notes the role that “a highly-educated” workforce played in promoting Minnesota’s economic growth.  That highly educated workforce was largely the product of the public investment that Mitch appears to spurn.  According to Art Rolnick, Senior Vice-President at the Federal Reserve Board Bank of Minneapolis:

Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Minnesota was an economic laggard, the state made a long-term commitment to upgrade its education system.  That kind of foresight helped forge a strong economy that has lasted for decades.

Mitch would have us believe that public investment has been irrelevant to Minnesota’s prosperity.

Well, no. That’s a bit of a strawman that relies more on the belief that if you support any “Public Investment” government taxation spending,  you have to be justify it all or risk being called “inconsistent” or “hypocritical”.   Some of us are a bit more nuanced than that.

The University of Minnesota – a leading land-grant university, an institution that was itself a key example of how “public investment” can shape society, usually for the better – long predated the explosion of statism in Minnesota.

Contrary to Mitch’s assertions, the economic prosperity that Minnesota enjoyed since 1970 was far from inevitable.

Well, doy.  Nothing but death and, er, taxes are “inevitable”.

But since the ongoing hagiography of the “Minnesota Miracle” focuses on Minnesota’s  prosperity in reference to the region (you don’t see many comparisons with, say, California or Texas or Arizona or New Jersey, right?), let’s do compare apples with

Our natural resources, while notable, are certainly not extraordinary relative to other states.  Our climate is a drag.  We are not particularly well situated in terms of our geographic location to major markets.  To prosper, smart public investments are essential.

Our resources are notable, though, compared with four other states; the Dakotas, Iowa and western Wisconsin; our climate no draggier (indeed, better than most of the neighbors’); our geographic location is indeed precisely why the Twin Cities and Duluth became not only the key cities in the state but in the region; the rivers and the railways always focused on the Twin Cities, and always connected the entire region and its immense agricultural wealth to the rest of the country and world.  And yes – among the land-grant schools in the region, the U of M’s access to a critical mass of population, communication, exposure and capital gave it advantages that, say, the University of North Dakota, another contemporaneous land-grant school, did not.

For Van Wychen to paint Minnesota as a cold, hapless South Dakota (or…Omaha?  Hmmm?), waiting for the beneficent hand of government to rescue it, is curious.

While reasonable people can disagree on whether CPA is a smart public investment, the debate on this subject should be based on fact, not ludicrous appeals to ideological co-religionists.

And there’s the clinker, right there.

Remember the grand finale to MN2020’s attack on charter schools (which I pretty thoroughly attacked earlier in the summer)?  How John Fitzgerald (and John Van Hecke) tried to tie the critiques of his deeply flawed analysis to partisanship (ignoring the fact that the vast majority of charter school families, especially in the Cities, are traditional DFL constituents)?  Say what you will about the numbers and the history – but at the end of the day, Minnesota’s tax and budget policy is a Holy War between sets of “co-religionists”, as opposed to a fundamental difference in outlook on government’s mission that we get to settle, by his leave, via the political process.

Van Wyche’s critique seems to boil down to…:

• Berg didn’t do his research: I’ll cop to it, since it really doesn’t take away from the larger point.
• If you question any government spending, you question all government spending: That’s just an absurd way to try to frame ones’ opponents. 
• Opposition to the tax and spend policies that MN2020 supports (and needs), and that LGA in its various forms helps to conceal is based on pseudo-religious superstition: Minnesota’s culture of spending needs a sober assessment, preferably in the context of a two-party debate with two different points of view.  Am I the one to carry on the debate on LGA’s technicalities?  Let’s not get crazy here.  But does the system we have dispel accountability and effectively launder spending?  Absolutely.

And that’s the part that actually matters.

Jon Stewart, last night:

Iran’s been “Put on notice?”  We’ve given Iran the same warning Colbert gives to bears?

It was kind of interesting, seeing the level of…belligerency (?) on the Daily Show?

Five straight days.

“And if you want to sing out, sing out – and if you want to be free, be free…”

Do you suppose Cat Stevens converted to Islam to escape this bit of his own legacy?

D’Onofrio, Erbe and Bogosian are leaving “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”:

Here’s a mystery. What is “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” without stars Vincent D’Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe and Eric Bogosian?

“CSI: Manhattan?”

Seriously, the “Law and Order” franchise wrote the book on surviving cast turmoil – “LandO” has run a total of 26 actors though the six-person nucleus of its cast (DA, Senior and Junior ADAs, the Lieutenant, and the Senior and Junior Detectives) the show goes through more junior detectives than Brett Favre goes through teams.

But “Criminal Intent?”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, all three will exit during the upcoming ninth season. (Yes, it’s been that long. But really, who’s counting?)

Well, not I.  I always liked the original LandO, and I always loved SVU (which, oddly, is still largely on its original cast) except for the brief run of madness and incipient PC while Marisky Hargitay was out on maternity leave, but CI usually left me a little unsatisfied, especially after it moved to USA.  The stories seemed like throwbacks to traditional police drama.  The only part I ever really cared about was the interplay between D’Onofrio and Erbe (and, for a season at least, Chris Noth and Annabella Sciorra).

Jeff Goldblum?  It’s like “Monk” with more guns and lawyers.

Over the years, I’ve had any number of “to-dos”, and ticked most of them off in due enough time.

Some of the “to-dos” that have been ageing longest on the shelf involve guitar parts I need to learn.

Granted, I no longer play in bands; my last real attempt at it was back around 2001, and we never came close to playing out.  But I still occasionally sit down and try to learn something new.  And the things I try, most often, are the ones that have been ageing on that “to-do” list for the longest.

A few years ago, I more or less picked up “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” by Richard Thompson.  And when I say “more or less”, I mean I can either play it really well but just a little slow, or I can play it at speed but about as sloppy as a Bolivian heart/lung transplant.

(It occurs to me that I’ll probably get an irate email form someone, sooner than later, saying “Hey, I am Bolivia’s leading heart/lung transplant surgeon, and I have a 100% success rate over 1,700 surgeries” – or, worse, “Hey, I’m on my way to La Paz with my father to get him a transplant – what are you trying to say?”  It’s a dumb, possibly ill-informed joke, although I do know my Google Fu well enough to at least check.  Whew . I’m not insulting the Bolivian transplant industry.  Good times).

But one that’s been on my to-do list for two decades – through three careers, two children, an entire marriage, five moves and five presidents – has been “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns ‘n Roses.  For whatever reason – not playing in glam-metal bands at first, then being too busy, and then being even more too busy – I just never got around to learning it.  And when I say “never got around to”, I mean I took the occasional swat at it over the years, and gave up.
Until this weekend.

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, you can find people who can show you how to play just about anything.  I solved the problem that’d always vexed me with the song (what position of “D” Slash used), and…

…voila!  I can play it!

Well, more or less.  I can play it slowly pretty well (for now), as I’m still getting the whole lick into “muscle memory” (which isn’t something I’ve done in a while, and lemme tell ya it’s a lot easier when you’re 18).  Up to speed?  Well, I’m about as sloppy as a Bolivian hear…

…er, pretty sloppy.

Going back to my infancy as a G-list pundit – at KSTP in 1986, when I started my first conservative talk show – I was keenly aware that going on the air without a goal was a little like trying to push a hose up a hill.

My goal was to be what Hugh Hewitt would later call a “center-right” conservative; someone who was conservative on the first principles of limited government, prosperity and security, and basically a small-l libertarian (but not libertine) and minimalist on other issues.

In other words, I remember thinking back in 1986, to be more or less like William Safire.

Safire died over the weekend of pancreatic cancer.

But up ’til then?  What a run!

There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal, which drove the president from office.

Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed Page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.

He’s a guy who’s bounced back a few times – itself an inspiration in these times:

Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie. But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a lot of powerful people squirm.

Rest in peace, William Safire.

Normally, this might be considered good news:

Minnesotans are feeling slightly better about the economy and their finances. But many are still feeling the effects of the recession in their day-to-day lives, according to a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.

But of course, this is the Strib’s Minnesota Poll.

So there really are only two questions:

1. How wrong is it?
2. How is that wrong-ness intended to benefit the DFL?

I’d say “I’m not hungry right now”, but then someone on the left would try to link me to the murder of any waitresses that turned up dead in the next few weeks.

Oh, speaking of which – someone named “MNBearBud” over at Minnesota Tragedy of Spirochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project apparently apparently believes that conservatives should answer on command, like puppies, even the most demented accsations:

Michele can talk about being opposed to gay rights, but when it comes to questions about the murdered census worker, she avoids an answer.

No, MNBearBud.  She ignores a stupid question. 

She quotes from “ThinkProgress”, a leftyblog that is to blogs what Rachel Maddow is to cable TV or M”P”P is to Minnesota – a screeching, simple-minded, demented production that even lowest common denominators with a modicum of self-respect find insulting:

The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel attended the conference and attempted to catch up with Bachmann to ask her about the murdered Census worker in Kentucky, but she evaded his question:

   “After the speech, Bachmann had only a few minutes to sign autographs and collect a stack of CDs and books from fans who’d followed her into the lobby. I caught up to her as she headed outside and asked if she had any response to the murder of a Kentucky census worker, having noticed that the Census, a constant target for Bachmann, did not figure into her speech. Bachmann recoiled a little at the question and turned to enter her limo. “

   “Thank you so much!” she said. “

As I noted last week, Weigel is usually a pretty intelligent commentator on the right. But asking her about her feelings about a murder with whom her only association is the slanderous free-association of a pack of (I’ll be charitable) hacks, and which is increasingly unlikely to have been a political statement at all,  is like asking the M”P”P’s Grace Kelly what she’s going to do with her MacArthur grant.  It’s just not relevant, and frankly nothing she needs to comment about at all.

Over the summer, Bachmann waged a high-profile, wildly-dishonest campaign against the Census, going so far as to claim that the data collected had been used to round up and intern Japanese-Americans in the 1940s.

Er, really, MNBearBud/”Think”Progress?

Um, how do you “think” the government found the Japanese-American citizens?

Do you think they drove down the street in a truck, looking for people with high math scores?

Question, MNBearBud:  how does government gather demographic data? 

Question for the M”P”P at large;  How many tests did you have to flunk to get accepted as writers for Minnesota’s most embarassing blog – history and IQ, both, or either one of them?

UPDATE:  I got a bit of feedback from a rather overwrought, solipsistic and confused person who, despite himself, did make one valid point.  My original take on this story mixed a serious point about the census and the myopia of Rep. Bachmann’s detractors with a rather childish jibe at the M”P”P writer involved.  I’ll cop to it. I’ve fixed the latter, to better focus on the former.

Because I’d probably be pretty dangerous in the White House…to our most conspicuous enemies.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s continued overt threats to wipe Israel (or any other country for that matter) off the planet coupled with recent intelligence revealing a new nuclear facility would be met with a different tact than our Hippy-Wimp-in-Chief has chosen.

President Barack Obama is offering Iran “a serious, meaningful dialogue” over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front.

“Iran’s leaders must now choose – they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people,” Obama said in his radio and Internet address Saturday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is like a young unmedicated schoolchild.

Continued rhetoric without consequences, without punishment, has emboldened him. Just like a young child, repeatedly told “No” but without limits and punishment will turn into a spoiled maladjusted kid, Iran has given the rest of the world the bird.

The fact that the same party that let Osama Bin Laden slip through their fingers occupies Congress and the White House no doubt further stokes the fires of insanity; an opportunity to bully the other school kids while the Principal is on sabbatical.

Jimmy II recently informed Ahmadinejad he’s “breaking the rules” and later this week ratcheted up his teleprompter which in turn threatened Iran’s President with the dark storm clouds of “serious dialogue.”

Chilling.

Does that mean Michelle’s husband will have his publicist produce words with more syllables? That he’ll enlist multiple teleprompters? Employ a laser pointer or a PowerPoint presentation?

Iran’s current leadership has been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of many of our young men and women in Iraq, extending already excruciatingly long tours of duty for our brave young soldiers. Ahmadinejad represents a faction that resents Western freedoms and prosperity and will stop at nothing to destroy us to level the playing field and will not be bargained with or swayed by chit chat.

They have threatened peaceful nations and have shown time and again that they are not to be trusted and at the same time hold their ostensibly peaceful citizens hostage while exposing them to future military retaliation. Every week that goes by they grow in their ability to wreak havoc across much of Europe – and that’s based on what we know.

If I were President, that nuclear facility would be gone today. By lunch. On a Saturday. I’d make a call on the Batline and warn the weekend Janitor. The smoke would be clear by Monday morning.

It’s called a cruise missile, Mr. President, and his ass, up put, should be one.

So it’s a good thing, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that I’m not President, and am armed only with a laptop whose battery has 19% charge left.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network will be out at Coopers in Eagan, for the Coopers Bike Run from 11AM-3PM. Come on out; proceeds benefit Tee It Up For The Troops and the Patriot Guard!

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Chad the Elder will be in for Brian, joining John to kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I are up next, from 1-3 – we’ll be joined by James Lileks at some point!
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King out on assignment today…
• 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 four 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)

A generation of left-wing agitation directly led to violence in the streets of Pittsburgh this week.

The clashes began after hundreds of protesters, many advocating against capitalism, tried to march from an outlying neighborhood toward the convention center where the summit is being held.The protesters banged on drums and chanted “Ain’t no power like the power of the people, ’cause the power of the people don’t stop.”

The marchers included small groups of self-described anarchists, some wearing dark clothes and bandanas and carrying black flags. Others wore helmets and safety goggles.

One banner read, “No borders, no banks,” another, “No hope in capitalism.” A few minutes into the march, protesters unfurled a large banner reading “NO BAILOUT NO CAPITALISM” with an encircled “A,” a recognized sign of anarchists.

Violence, injuries and much property damage ensued. 

This sort of violence is the inevitable, direct result of the kind of rhetoric we’re getting from the left:

• Michael Moore’s assaults on “capitalism”
• The rhetoric of the likes of Keith Ellison and Dennis Kucinich – prominent Democratic/leftist legislators
• The demonstrations at the homes of AIG executives by groups of rent-an-outragers (we call them “TeabAIGers”), who made it very clear that the political is utterly personal
• The writings of vital lefty pundits like Nick Coleman and their disparaging references to “Big Cheeses”…
• The anti-business rhetoric of the likes of Andy Stein of the SEIU.
• The demonization of conservative causes, groups, and even thoughts by Janet Napolitano

…and many, many more, it’s clear to me that it’s inevitable that the left’s rhetoric on the economy is not only going to lead directly to violence; it’s already led there.

(more…)

…you could take some comfort in the knowledge (if you read the leftmedia) that all terrorist threats were trumped-up paranoia from the Administration and their neocon supporters.

Thankfully, since Obama improved our image abroad, all that ended forever.

(And someday, after Obama invades Pakistan and turns his attention to Iran, does anyone else think it’s be grimly, ironically droll if Obama discovered there were really no nuke plants?)

It’s been a while.  Let’s do a meme:

1. The phone rings. Who will it be?

Mortgage sales weasels.  Over and over and over and over and over…

2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart?

Always. They’re no fun for joyriding anymore.

3. In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener?

I wind up talking a lot, which stinks, since I’d rather listen…

4. Do you take compliments well?

Well?  Sure.  Gracefully?  Not so much.  Often?  Pshaw.

5. Do you play Sudoku?

I’ve never even thought about starting.

6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive?

For how long?  I probably know some of the basics well enough to get by for a while.  On a desert island with nothing but a volleyball for company?  That might be trouble.

7. Did you ever go to camp as a kid?

Music camp in 7th and 8th grade.

8. What was your favorite game as a kid?

“Escape”.  It was a fairly elaborate and utterly engrossing game we could only play on my dad’s (brick) porch.  It was an L-shaped porch.  The game involved two “guards” and any number of “POWs”.  The “POWs” stayed at the top of the “L”.  One “guard” walked back and forth on the bottom of the “L”; the other, back and forth in my dad’s side yard (below the bottom of the “L”).  The “POWs'” goal was to make it, utterly unseen, back to my Dad’s garage.  They’d jump off the dropoff at the top of the “L”, and try to sneak back to the garage.  But if a “guard” saw them at any point and yelled out “FREEZE” and their name and location (“FREEZE!  Radish, behind the garbage can!”), they were “busted” and had to sit in the “Cooler” (yes, we’d all just watched The Great Escape) at the bottom of the “L” for five minutes; if you got busted twice, you had to be a “guard” (so everyone got rotated through pretty fast).

Although the guards had to walk (broadly) back and forth, getting to the garage was a lot harder than it sounds.  You could shoot straight across the back yard – but it was fairly open, and you’d get caught.  Or you could sneak around the neighbors’ houses – but the mad dash to the garage was pretty exposed.  Or you could crawl down the sidewalk all the way around the block and work your way up the alley – but the guard at the bottom of the “L” had a decent vantage point to catch that sort of thing.  It taught us all a lot of useful skills; stealth, psychology,

My dad, naturally, hated having scads of pre-teens jumping off his porch and crawling about neighbors’ yards.  I didn’t really understand why until I had kids of my own.  But it was a great game, if I say so myself – and yes, I invented most of it.

9. If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew she was married, would you?

Noooo. Not even for Scarlett Johannson.

10. Could you date someone with different religious beliefs than you?

Nope.  It’s been a bit of a buzzkill on a few otherwise promising dates over the past ten years.

11. Do you like to pursue or be pursued?

Total pursuer.

12. Use three words to describe yourself?

Gary Larson Lives.

13. Do any songs make you cry?

I never cry.  But if I did, and songs could provoke it, it’d probably be “Here Comes a Regular” by the Replacements.

14. Are you continuing your education?

Always. Just not formally.

15. Do you know how to shoot a gun?

Yes!  And I love it!  It’s the best stress relief there is that doesn’t require another person.

16. Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth?

Nope.

17. How often do you read books?

Daily?

18. Do you think more about the past, present or future?

Probably the future.  It’s really my big hope.

19. What is your favorite children’s book?

Love You Forever.

20.What color are your eyes?

Blue.

21. How tall are you?

6’5.

22. Where is your dream house located?

On a wilderness island a fifteen minute boat ride from Manhattan.

23. If your house was on fire, what would be the first thing you grabbed?

Assuming my kids are safe?  A photo album.

24. When was the last time you were at Olive Garden?

December, 2003.  Date from…well, not hell.  Date from Richfield.  That’s it.

25. Where was the furthest place you traveled today?

So far?  I picked up my laptop by my bed.  Around 8:30, I’ll bike to work.

26. Do you like mustard?

I love love love the coarse-ground German stuff, with the whole marinaded mustard seeds.  I actually eat that with a spoon.

Earlier today, I wrote a piece in which I noted that the leftymedia – specifically, the City Pages’ generic hypstr drone of the month Matt Hoffman, and DFL tabloidblogger Dusty Trice, had beaten the FBI to solving the Sparkman murder in Kentucky; Sparkman, the reports when, was found hanged from a tree with the word “Fed” supposedly scrawled across his chest.

Hoffman:

 Now a census worker has been found in what appears to be an anti-government lynching. Does [conservative MN Representative Michele] Bachmann own some responsibility?

Trice:

I’m going to say it again because sadly I feel it bears repeating. I strongly believe that the inflammatory rhetoric Rep. Michele Bachmann thinks passes for policy debate is going to end in violence. 

As I noted in my piece – the biggest violence was against fact and journalism.  As of the time Trice and Hoffman wrote their pieces, investigators weren’t even sure it was a murder, much less politically motivated.

And six hours later, they still aren’t!:

A spokesman for the Kentucky police told TPMmuckraker last night that police were still looking into death, that an autopsy has been scheduled, and no cause of death has yet been listed.

And the commander of the state police post handling the case told the Lexington Herald-Leader today that the police hadn’t confirmed it was a homicide. “There are too many unanswered questions for us to lean one way or the other,” she said. “Every scenario is still on the table. We have not ruled this is a hate crime against a federal employee.”

And an ABC News report suggests there could be more in play than raw anti-government feeling:

[S]ome people wonder if his death in the remote part of southeastern Kentucky known for its meth labs and hidden marijuana fields had less to do with his job than simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If that speculation were accurate, the “Fed” that may have been scrawled on Sparkman’s chest could be intended as a warning by criminals to law enforcement to stay away, rather than as a pure expression of opposition to government — though it may be hard to separate those two motivations entirely.

Still, it’d be ironic; if Sparkman were murdered by criminals, that’d make his death the responsibility of a key Democratic constituency. 

Was that unfair?  Oh, I’m sorry.  I just find myself driven to say unfair things from the endless stupidity of the left, trying to link violence to dissent from The One’s (pbuh) vision. 

Indeed:

It’s not even entirely clear what Sparkman was doing in the remote area.

The left’s current meme is that conservative dissent is provoking violence; the local leftymedia has all but indicted (in their own minds) Rep. Bachmann of complicity in Mr. Sparkman’s death. 

And yet it seems the only violence is against fact, and against any sort of ethics.  Trice and Hoffman – among many, many others – jumped to a conclusion that was not only unwarranted, but that slanders each and every conservative that voices any level of caution about big government.

To paraphrase Matt Hoffman:  do people who leap to slander dissent deserve to “own some responsibility?” 

Other than being regarded as factual laughingstocks, I mean?

I had a little flashback yesterday.  One of the obnoxious lefties in my neighborhood still has his “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” sticker on his rusty, oil-belching Subaru. 

Of course it is.  Unless you’re a limited-government conservative. 

Matt Hoffmann at the ever-less-interesting City Pages marinades in the slander:

Crazy Michele Bachmann [Uh, Lazy, Cliche-addicted “Writer” Matt Hoffman?  That’s “Representative Michele Bachmann, to you] has said many foolish things as of late, but who can forget her crusade against the census?

Bachmann proclaimed that she wouldn’t fill out the census form because she was worried about being rounded up and put into Japanese internment camps (sorry folks, there’s no making sense of it).

Of course there is.  Giving information to the government is always a two-edged sword at best – as the law-abiding gun owners of Morton Grove, Illinois. 

Now a census worker has been found in what appears to be an anti-government lynching. Does Bachmann own some responsibility?

Dunno, Matt.  If someone shoots Michele Bachmann (hint: don’t), will all of you leftymedia lemmings who’ve been dutifully parrotting the “Bachmann is Crazy” meme for the past ten years “own some responsibilty?”

The answer, of course, is “no”, partly because “lefties never believe they’re responsible for the consquences of their words and deeds” – and partly because we have no idea what motivated the killer (and kudos to Matt Hoffman for being the Eff Bee Friggin Eye to figuring out the motivation!), and partly because it’s an incredible stretch to think that anybody outside of Karl Bremer and Bill Pendergast would ever be motivated to violence by Rep. Bachmann’s sometimes-hyperbolic, sometimes malapropic, but always benign statements (not that facts mean anything to trained meme-repetition labradoodles like Hoffman).  

But mostly because most people know that it’s stupid to blame free speech, even dissent, even heated, sometimes hyperbolic dissent, for the occasional, isolated action of (someone we can fairly assume is) an insane person.

Dusty Trice makes the case:

Bachmann went after the census workers, [er – actually, she went after the Census – Ed.] saying she was worried that the information they collected might be used to put Americans in concentration camps. Then on 9/12/09 a census worker is found hanged near a cemetary in Kentucky, his corpse desecrated with what appears to be anti-government language carved into his chest.

Right. 

In similar news, in 1969 the Beatles released “Helter Skelter”; the Manson family shortly went on a crime spree for which John Lennon is rightly blamed.  Ditto Jodie Foster and the attempted murder of Ronald Reagan…

I’m going to say it again because sadly I feel it bears repeating. I strongly believe that the inflammatory rhetoric Rep. Michele Bachmann thinks passes for policy debate is going to end in violence. 

This, of course, is Dusty Trice,  the Walter Winchell of the Twin Cities blogosphere; the guy who conjured an “angry mob” and a “speech ban” apparently from pronto-pup fumes. 

And so in a world where fact is subordinate to agenda, of course every act of violence is going to be tied to Bachmann’s “inflammatory rhetoric”.  And Glenn Beck’s, and Rush Limbaugh’s, and for that matter Tim Pawlenty’s and mine.  Because the left doesn’t like the way the public discourse is going for them; things have taken a sharp, unexpected swerve since The One took office.  And the only response they know, indeed the only tool they have in the toolbox, is to defame, demonize and slander dissent; to try to get “the faithful” to feel like they’re the white hats surrounded by the benighted and icky.

The data is hammered into place to fit the conclusion.

Which seems to be why we still have a City Pages.  That and the ads.

Walter Mondale, who spent four years as background scenery in the worst entire Presidential administration of my life so far, barks on command and echoes his worthless former boss:

Former Vice President Walter Mondale joined his old boss Jimmy Carter Wednesday, arguing that some of the opposition to President Obama’s agenda is fueled by racial animus.

Asked at an event in Washington whether he agreed with former President Carter that racism was behind some criticism of Obama, Mondale took a long pause before answering: “Yeah.”

“I don’t like saying it,” Mondale continued. “Having lived through those years, when civil rights was such a bitter issue, and when we argued those things for years … I know that some of that must still be around.”

“I know it must be there.  Somewhere.  Maybe next to my keys?”

“I don’t want to pick a person, say, he’s a racist, but I do think the way they’re piling on Obama, the harshness, you kind of feel it,” he said. “I think I see an edge in them that’s a little bit different and a little harsher than I’ve seen in other times.”

Riiiight, Fritz.  Eight years of “Smirking Chimp” and Stewart and Colbert (comedy is borne of anger, as is whatever it is that Colbert does) and Randy Rhodes (among many others) openly joking about killing the President – with not a whiff of pique, much less self-righteous outrage from irrelevant lefties like Mondale – but now the climate is bothering you?

At a screening of a new documentary on his life, “Fritz,” at the George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, the 1984 Democratic nominee for president lamented what he called a coarse tone in political life today, telling the audience: “It’s been discouraging to watch this health care debate.”

Patricians like Mondale pine for the days when starchambers of DFL powerbrokers (and a few pseudo-Republican castrati who’d been selected for their mute compliance) made all those calls for all the dumb peasants.

So Walter – when a lot of people, myself included, voted emphatically against your nannystatism and tax mania and America-last-ism 25 years ago, in history’s biggest landslide, were we just a bunch of anti-Norwegian bigots?

…that, while the US can screw our firm allies and friends the Poles, and can send the Iranian demonstrators barely a word of moral support, that the Obama Administration can be bothered to put its full faith and credit behind this guy:

It’s been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He’s sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and “Israeli mercenaries” are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.

“We are being threatened with death,” he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him.

Rumors that MoveOn.org is collecting tinfoil to send to Zelaya’s party are strictly unconfirmed.

In my various skirmishes with the Minnesota left’s various anti-charter school advocates, I’ve brought a lot of evidence to bear that a) charter schools are a vital component in school choice, and b) most of the “evidence” against charter schools is partisan baked wind.

But if the public-school advocates had brought this to the table, I might have changed my mind.

Oh, I’m being sarcastic. It’s a bunch of elementary teachers leading their kids through a song praising Barack Obama.

Did I say “Praising?”

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

[switch to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”]

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all [do? doth??] say “hooray!”
Hooray Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first Black American to lead this great na-TION!
Hooray, Mr. President something-something-some
A-something-something-something-some economy is number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And the same for all Americans [in?] the great Red White and Blue!
So something Mr. President we all just something-some,
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray a-something-something-some!
Hip, hip hooray! (3x)

It occurs that linking to this video might make me a racist, so I should just stop right now.

I tuned into “Fresh Air” with, um, aaaah, um, Terry Gross on MPR last night for a bit…

…and heard what sounded, at first blush, like a typical “lefty goes among the conservatives” story; Gross was interviewing some kind of “mainstream”/lefty journalist about his visit to the Value Voters Summit.

The better news – the part that made me actually stay tuned for most of the episode – was that it was David Weigel of the Washington Independent, one of precious few generally good reporters in the entire Sorosnet “Center for “Independent” Media” chain.

Weigel has an interesting beat…:

Is the conservative right undergoing a transformation? Journalist David Weigel thinks so. Weigel covers the Republican party for the online magazine The Washington Independent, where he’s written about tea party protests, anti-health care activists, the “birther” movement and the recent Values Voter summit.

I’m not sure what’s the most interesting thing about the interview: that the left thinks they need to study conservatism like it’s an anthropology experiment?  That Terry, um, uh, Gross seems to eager to pass on the current A-list of anti-right slanders (lookit all those racist teagaggers!)?
But Weigel’s interview is interesting; it seems that Weigel, almost alone among the media and left (pardon the redundancy), notices what we tea-partiers have figured out, something I noted in my speech to the Minnesota Tea Party last week; the right seems to be focused less on individual issues – life, immigration, security – and more on the contitutional first principles that need to link us.

It’s actually good news.