Let’s take a trip back through the history of Nick Coleman.

In 2004, to impugn Governor Pawlenty’s budget-cutting platform, he paid a potemkin visit to an inner city school (one where my daughter had attended kindergarten) and bellowed “YOUR SCHOOLS ARE BURNING” – as if the academic and social failure, financial wastrelcy and generalized collapse of public schools were something that only happened under Republican governors who twiddled with the budget (and hardly touched education funding).  It was a fairly bald-faced swat at the governor and the state’s thin film of fiscal conservatives.

And, of course, it was wrong.  Theatrical, and wrong.

Later still in 2004, when Coleman tried to tie the idea that people had to go all the way to Minneapolis for free flu shots to Pawlenty:

“It was time to leave the PROFESSIONAL BUILDING. I wished everyone good health and walked out onto Hennepin Avenue. When I looked down the street and squinted, I could almost see Lakewood Cemetery, four blocks away. The gates were open.”

In 2007, Nick Coleman – bailing desperately as his effort to tie the 35W Bridge disaster to budget-cutting slipped beneath the waves – reacted badly to news that engineers were about to tie the collapse to an unfortunate but fairly mundane and utterly non-political material failure; “get ready to be gusseted”, he snorted, like a third-rate illusionist hoping to push back the laws of physics by the sheer force of his rhetoric.

So are we starting to see a pattern?

After seven years of success at taming the state budget monster and running a state that just plain runs better than most of the rest of the country – especially better than the liberal cesspools that Coleman seems to admire so much – Pawlenty is spending the legislative off-season pre-campaigning for President.  And that means knocking around the country.

And just like the burning schools and magic cemetary gates and flying gusset plates, Coleman’s going to try to twist it into some sort of malfeasance.

Because for some reason, Coleman thinks Pawlenty has left something undone back home:

It’s called Minnesota, and although Pawlenty can find 49 other states, he’s having trouble feeling his way around his home state. For good reason: Minnesota’s problems could trip up his ambitions. As Pawlenty travels the Republican rubber chicken circuit, Minnesota is heading into uncharted waters.

And its governor is AWOL.

Minnesota’s “uncharted waters” are these: things are tough, but better than in most of the country.  We have a nasty budget situation – but at least the Governor balanced it (over the DFL’s politically dead body).

But to Coleman, it’s not about substance or those pesky numbers.  It’s about appearances – in this case, appearing to take the yapping schnauzers of his opposition seriously [emphasis added by me]:

Pawlenty’s refusal to participate in a legislative summit designed to stave off looming fiscal disaster was nothing less than nonfeasance. Instead of doing his job at the Capitol last week, Pawlenty attended a shmoozefest in Eden Prairie, surrounded by business leaders and loyalists (not to mention his adoring staff). In shirking his duty, he broke faith with voters and broke bonds with the legacy of his party.

This may be the most perfectly, inscrutably dumb paragraph Coleman has ever written.  I have literally spent five minutes trying to encapsulate the torrent of dumb and wrong; the best I can come up with is a list:

1. The “legislative summit” is a do-nothing charade being thrown by his incompetent, spendthrift opposition to try to make them look like they’re marginally less useless than they are.
2. Er, Nick?  Wasn’t the premise that the Governor was galavanting around the country and couldn’t find his way around Minnesota?  You do know that Eden Prairie is in Minnesota, right?
3. “Nonfeasance” is not a word.
4. Not to be pedantic, but neither is “Shmoozefest”.  It’s “Schmoozefest”.
5. It seems a bit of an abuse of rhetorical license to say that Pawlenty’s staff “adores” him; worse still to say it as if it’s a bad thing.  Perhaps Coleman’s experiences at the Strib newsroom have programmed him to think colleagues should hate each other?

It gets worse:

The Capitol event drew dozens of former state government leaders,

[I’m wondering; I know who elects “government leaders”, but I am trying to think who elects or selects “former government leaders?”  What is their significance?  Why would we care what they think?  Get back to me on that…]

including a bevy of mainstream Minnesota Republicans such as former governors Al Quie and Arne Carlson, who warned the state is steering toward an iceberg with no captain at the helm. He was correct: The “captain” has gotten his own boat and is rowing toward the horizon.

I’m going to depart for a moment from fisking Coleman, and take a shot at fisking the entire DFL. The whole “Arne Carlson was the mainstream” meme was the DFL’s dork-fingered version of Alinsky’s approach to campaigning long before anyone in Minnesota had heard of Saul Alinsky.  Of course, Arne Carlson is not a mainstream Republican. He’s a throwback to a pre-1976 world (which survived until 1998 in Minnesota, where the Reagan Revolution bypassed the MNGOP for twenty-odd years), trotted out purely to try to score points against the GOP.

But the lesson of this last two elections – conservatives win, “moderates” lose – is so obvious, even the MNGOP seems to have been getting it lately.

Both major parties — and the governor — share responsibility for the deep partisan divide that is hampering solutions to Minnesota’s problems. They also share a responsibility to put the state on sound footing.

And, unlike the DFL – which dithered its way through the session, thumbing its nose at the GOP all the way, and then tried to ram through a bloated monstrosity of a spending bill at the last second behind a foul rhetorical cloud of demands for “bipartisanship NOW!” – Pawlenty carried that responsibility out.  He fought – alone – against a two-chamber press.

And won.Twice.

I think he’s carried out his responsibility – the job for which he was elected – just fine.

Now, of course I’ve saved the worst for last.  As I predicted on the show this past Saturday, Coleman – being purely a monkey of the Minnesota mushy-left establishment – is so devoid of insight that he has to resort to casual defamation.

For a guy who acted as if the sky was falling when the president asked to speak to schoolchildren, Pawlenty sure seems laid back about his own obligations. He has dived so deep into the right-wing tide pool that by Thursday, he had joined Sarah Palin and a few other GOP confederates in threatening to invoke the 10th Amendment — in effect having Minnesota secede from the union on health care reform with little regard for the effect on Minnesota’s 450,000 uninsured citizens.

“Secede from the union”.  Just like those slave owners.  Tenth Amendment equal slavery!

Tim Pawlenty is too busy primping for the GOP presidential beauty contest and bizarrely making himself into a financial Pollyanna. Predictions put the next deficit at as high as three or four times the 2009 deficit — and without billions in federal stimulus funds to help close the gap.

Then perhaps the lesson will not be lost on Minnesotans; it’s time to quit electing  spendthrift DFLers to the Legislature.

But Pollyanna’s take on the coming crisis: “It’s a very manageable number,” he told the lovefest in Eden Prairie.

Waiter, I’d like whatever he’s having.

All together now:  Nick, you’ve had more than enough.  You’ve always had more than enough.

UPDATE:  A commenter notes that Coleman’s “prediction” – that next year’s deficit could be four times what it was projected for this year – would mean the deficit would be 85% as large as the budget itself.

And while I put nothing past the DFL, especially the current horde of hamsters in the Senate and House, that seems just a tad implausible.

So far.

…that the left’s “atmosphere of hatred” provoked  this atrocity?

State police at the Corunna post have confirmed a well-known anti-abortion activist was shot multiple times and killed [Friday] morning in front of Owosso High School.

The victim’s identity has not yet been released but the shooting occurred around 7:30 a.m., after most students were off the buses and safely inside the building, said Owosso schools transportation supervisor Jayne Campbell.

State police also confirmed that a suspect was taken into custody about 8:15 a.m. at the suspect’s home.

Of course we know how it works; if a conservative shows up at a rally with a legal gun carried legally, it’s a sign of incipient violence to the left, which will also torture context (Tim McVeigh and Holocaust-museum shooter Van Brunn were not conservatives, no matter how the left might wish it to be so) to create an appearance of depravity.  But when “the right” are the victims, as in Owosso and in 2007 on Christians in Colorado Springs?  Page A8.

Of course, we don’t know if the shooting in Michigan was politicaly motivated yet.  But it’s interesting that the same media that will leap to the most pejorative smear by association possble about conservatives will work so diligently to avoid scrutinizing lefties.

And so do I.

Time to pry open the hatch on that memory hole and start shoveling fast.

According to the Administration (via it’s biggest media fan club, MSNBC, which is to Barack Obama what Lori Sturdevant is to the DFL), yelling “You Lie” isn’t merely rude (but accurate); it’s racist:

According to MSNBC’s David Shuster on Friday, South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson shouting ‘you lie’ to President Obama was racism on display: “The fact that Joe Wilson is from South Carolina…it strikes a lot of people as awfully close to the idea that maybe there was some sort of racist or bigoted element there.”

Shuster went on to add: “And especially then when you look up at the picture and you see older white men, all Republicans, sitting there. Just it gives off a strange vibe.”

So – according to the Administration (and I think it’s fair to say MSNBC channels the administration on all particulars), dissent isn’t just (putatively) wrong; it’s depraved.  You’re a “teabagger”, you’re a “racist”, you’re a “militiaman”, you’re a loose cannon waiting to go off and kill a bunch of gentle liberals (like the big “pro-choice” he-man who shot a 63-year-old guy with an oxygen tank yesterday, of course).

Love that new openness, Mr. President.

Today we’ve got a huuuuge show. 

We have eight solid hours of great live radio planned:

• Volume II “The Headliners” –  Brian and John are both out of town today, so Ed is on from 11-12, I’ll be on from 12-1, and then we’ll be both do our usual gig from 1-3.  We’ll be talking with protesters from the Saint Cloud Tea Party early, and then with Jon Van Hecke of MN2020 later on in the broadcast. We might also be talking with Rep. Michele Bachmann later in the broadcast.  Of course, we’ll also be talking with anyone who attended the President’s rally. 
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King is up next; he’ll be breaking his 22 year abstention from meat at some point during the show.  See what meat won the poll over at SCSU Scholars.
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM – and the Sons of Liberty are up from 5-6!

(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 at the Fair!

Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

You’ve heard a bit about it today, no doubt.  You’ve read a bit about it on this blog over the years.  Along with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s the single most pivotal event of my adult lifetime.

And, as my radio colleague/partner Ed Morrissey notes over at Hot Air today, his as well:

While New York City and Washington DC (and Shanksville, PA) are far removed from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, that really only mattered in our sense of impotence as the towers collapsed and the Pentagon burned.  We knew that the terrorists didn’t attack New York City for being New York City, or Washington DC for being Washington DC.  They had attacked America for being America — and that made it all local and personal.

Which is something some Americans – on all sides of our political “aisle” – have forgotten since then.  They didn’t attack cities, or coasts, or electoral blocs; they attacked America.  And all of America responded.

And continues to.

For me?  It wasn’t just an attack.  It was the world sinking back into some very bad habits.  I wrote this on March 11, 2002 – a month into this blog’s life, six months after the attacks.

I grew up in rural North Dakota, not far from the vast fields of Minuteman III missiles, close to the glide paths of the B-52 bombers,. all of which were on alert for my entire cognitive life. I was keenly aware of the presence of all of those first strike targets, forty miles away. And while I may have been one of a minority, growing up around all of that did affect me – there was a long-standing anxiety that my life and the entire world around me could be incinerated in seconds, or irradiated away, without warning.

The Berlin Wall fell about the time my oldest child was born. It would be easy and melodramatic to tell you that knowing my daughter would grow up in a world without that tension hanging over her was a wonderful, liberating sensation – but it’s the truth.

I was driving to work on September 11. I was on 394, by Xenia/Park Place. I’d just flipped over from KQRS’ interview with PJ O’Rourke to MPR’s live coverage of the attacks, without warning. And as the day wore on , and the shock sank in, that exhilaration – covered by the many other emotional layers of an adult’s life – sank away. The threat is different – but it’s still the same.So my kids are growing up in the same world I did, now. The threat is less omnipresent – I dont’ suspect the Twin Cities are high on any terrorist’s hit list – but more visceral. Maybe that’s a good thing – it’s harder for this threat to fade into the background of daily life.

Like Ed, I wanted to do something.  But I was a 38 year old newly-minted single father with a bum knee and a bad eye – not the kind of person the military was going to be bidding for.   I had no job skills the military needed, even as a civilian contractor (unless I got a PhD in usability and human factors – and that wasn’t going to happen). 

The blog was as close as I got to something remotely useful.  I started it five months after 9/11, the very day I learned what a “blog” was and how I could do one. 

But I changed some other things.  I’ve always loved shooting -and I got more diligent about it since 9/11.  I’ve come to believe it’s the duty of a law-abiding citizen to have the knowledge and means to defend themselves, their families, their communities and their freedom.  And while I don’t rationally believe there will be terrorists skulking through that shadows of Saint Paul, ever (even though “domestic terrorism” has bounced off the far corners of my life, once), the knowledge that I can pile a few of ’em up like cordwood if I need to helps with one of the most important things a human can do; replace fear with purpose.  It doesn’t matter if evil wears a turban, s**tkickers or anything in between; the ability to shoot it in the face equalizes a lot.  It’s not fear (I keep having to explain to lefties, who too often just don’t get it); it’s pre-empting fear.

I have also gotten more proactive about making sure government leads, follows or gets out of the way.  In the wake of 9/11, before the blog, I asked my kid’s principals, adminsitrators and other school officials “What would you do if, say, a tank car of anhydrous ammonia blew up at the Empire Builder yard, and a cloud of poison were heading toward the school?”  I was distinctly underwhelmed with their answers – but no moreso than those of the nameless bureaucrats at the World Trade Center who told everyone to stay in place.  I’ve marveled – and found immense comfort – in the stories that showed that Americans do maintain our tradition of not needing authority and officialdom to react properly to events, in ways big (United Flight 93’s passengers’ counterattack) and small but profound (the people in the WTC who organized their own orderly evacuation, long before the firemen got there; absent the thousands of office-dwellers who thought for themselves and took care of each other, the death toll would have been vastly higher). And as best I can, I’ve tried to bring my kids up with the idea that this nation,l it’s ideals, its people and its history, is something exceptional – even more worth defending than it is worth attacking.  Has it stuck?  We’ll see, I’m sure.

So on this eighth anniversary?  It’s a good time to remember. 

And head to the range.  And send the world’s scumbags a message. 

Actually a box of messages.

When former President Bush gave his state of the union a few years ago, a clutch of Democrat legislators, hidden by their numbers, booed.  They profaned their office and attacked the dignity of the President’s address – and not a one of them had the cojones to identify themselves, much less either apologize or elaborate.  It was sophomoric at best, cowardly and solopsistic at worst.

Rep. Joe Wilson broke protocol, and rudely so, by standing up and called the President a liar during his Health Care pep rally campaign speech address earlier this week.  Unlike his Democrat forebears, he apologized later.

But let the record show, as an emailer pointed out this morning, that Wilson was right:

President says his proposed health insurance law will not give taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage to illegal aliens.  Proposed law says specifically that illegal aliens are not covered.

BUT . . . proposed law also says the government is forbidden to ASK if the person is an illegal alien, or to demand proof of citizenship/legal residence.

In my mind, that’s like Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell.  Official military policy is that gays are not allowed to serve in the military.  But the military is forbidden to ask if you’re gay.  So the end result is that gays DO serve in the military as long as nobody talks about it. 

I wish the President would explain why that won’t be the same result with the insurance plan.  Illegal aliens will show up to apply for taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage, the government won’t be allowed to ask if they’re illegal, so the illegal aliens will get coverage as long as nobody talks about it, right?  If not right, why not?

The President who says the law will not give insurance to illegal aliens but the Congressman who says the President is lying about what the law will do.  I’m on the Congressman’s side in this one.

There’s a time and a place to attack the President.  I’m not entirely sure that a glorified campaign stump speech isn’t one of them – but nonetheless, at the very least we are to respect the office if not that man, his (misguided) policies and his (misleading) rhetoric.

Might have been rude to interrupt the speech.  But he was right.  I’d rather my Congressman risked being rude to be right.  Good for him.  Wish we had a few like him from Minnesota.

Well, we do; Michele Bachmann isn’t one to hold back when she’s on a tear – to her occasional chagrin. 

Doesn’t seem like such a bad trait, sometimes, these days.

In the wake (or afterglow, if you work for MSNBC) of Obama’s latest prime-time grabbing foofarah, I’m noticing a telling disconnect between those who examine what comes next in concrete terms from those who just want to bask in how awesomely terrific our dreamy president appeared. Let’s start by examining the latter, and what better example could there be than noted pant-crease fetishist David Brooks…

On Wednesday night, Barack Obama delivered the finest speech of his presidency. The exposition of his health care views was clear and lively. The invocation of Teddy Kennedy was moving and effective. The rumination at the end about the American character and the role of government was the clearest summary of Obama’s political philosophy that he has yet given us.

It’s not often you can summarize an ostensibly conservative columnist’s opening paragraph about a Democratic president’s call to socialize medicine as, “Squeeeee!!!” But this is hardly the first time Brooks has been enraptured by Obama. The telling part begins to show next, but Brooks doesn’t seem to register the significance even as he makes note of it.

(more…)

Ed Morrissey and I will be broadcasting live from the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol this morning, live from 7-9AM at AM1280 The Patriot (also livestreaming at the Patriot website).

Blog posting will be zephyr light this morning.

There’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The good news?  Outrage from Twin Cities’ bar owners over a ham-fisted backdoor tax hike (which we covered last March) got results; the Met Council has cut the regional sewer fee for patio seating:

Twin Cities bar and restaurant owners got a break Wednesday from the Metropolitan Council on fees charged for outdoor patio seating that help pay for the regional sewer system. One pub owner already is planning to add a patio next summer.

The Metropolitan Council approved a 75 percent discount on the fees effective Oct. 1. Restaurateurs had argued that the regional sewer-system fees they pay for outdoor dining seats, on top of what they pay for indoor seating, are excessive.

The Council was charging the same fees for outdoor patio seats – which are really useful from June through August, or April through October for people like me – as they were for indoor, year-round seating.  It made patio seating unaffordable for many restauranteurs and pub owners, like our friend Terry Keegan at Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis who, unsurprisingly given the outspoken sort he is, turns up in the story.

And therein lies the “bad” news, of sorts:

Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis shut down its outdoor patio last year after city inspectors said the bar needed to pay $7,200 in regional sewer fees. Keegan’s plans to reopen the patio next year. “We wouldn’t do it at all if they didn’t bring the charge down,” owner Terry Keegan said. “We simply couldn’t afford it.”

So the patio will not, in fact, be open for Saturday’s fifth anniversary MOB gala.  But what the heck; the sidewalk’ll be nice. 

And we have a victory to celebrate now! 

Given how few and far between victories are for small businessmen, property owners and the little guy in places like the Twin Cities this past few years, it’s worth tipping a pint or two.

…could turn around and yell at my sister and brother to quit bickering and shaddap.

President Obama, on the other hand…

Shaking off a summer of setbacks, President Barack Obama summoned Congress to enact sweeping health care legislation Wednesday night, declaring the “time for bickering is over”

…no.  By your leave, your highness, our represenatives will continue to represent the majority of this nation that has serious questions – you might call it “bickering”, but then you’re not my Dad – about your health insurance “plan”.

That is all.

I watched bits and pieces of the latest Great Obama Oration (henceforth, “GOO”) last night, mostly because the alternative television programming between seven and eight on Wednesday evening turns out to be about as entertaining as the extended director’s cut of Gigli. Also because “So You Think You Can Dance” had to cut to an occasional commercial break.

I was struck by the fact that someone I am assured is one of the most electrifying speakers of our time sounds so monotonous, repetitive, and stuck on his old campaign trail script. As God is my witness, at one point he actually said, “I won’t stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.” Didn’t he use that same line in the GOO he delivered at the Ankeny, Iowa Lion’s Club back on the campaign trail in 2007? And the GOO at the Rutland, New Hampshire “Sun Up Cafe”? And the GOO at the Newberry, South Carolina VFW? Etc. etc. etc. I suppose such a fervent adherence to recycling (in this case of speech lines) probably wins extra support from the environmental lobby, but it didn’t seem quite suited to the moment.

I was also struck by how the post GOO analysis remained nearly perfectly split along partisan lines. It’s not so surprising that the Democratic backers confessed themselves smitten over the stunning power and unexpected (?!!) effectiveness of the GOO. That’s the same script they follow every time Obama fails to impale himself on his teleprompter while simultaneously being caught on tape cursing out a troop of cub scouts. No, that much I knew would be coming.

The striking thing was how the media-proclaimed post-partisan president seemingly did little more than rally his own partisans in, once again, campaign-like fashion. Why, I’ll bet if they had to vote for president tomorrow they’d vote for him again!! Take that, naysayers!

The problem is I’m not sure that particular outcome added anything new or significant to the health care insurance mumble… mumble… reform situation. What exactly was this speech supposed to do? Lay out a clear compromise to break the Congressional stalemate? He didn’t offer one. Win over independents or votes across the aisle? Didn’t seem much attempted. Come down one way or the other on a “public option”? He once again played both sides of the fence.

So anyway, near as I can tell, yet another GOO has passed and once again nothing has really changed.

One of the reasons I hired “Bogus” Doug Williams as executive managing editor at Shot In The Dark was that I could be assured we cover stories like this…:

Fans took to the Internet after Wednesday’s announcement to express either pleasant surprise or total shock that DeGeneres was picked to replace Paula Abdul.

“I mean, really? Ellen DeGeneres?” wrote popular “Idol” blogger MJ Santilli at mjsbigblog.com. “She guest judged ‘So You Think You Can Dance‘ last season, and her critiques were comic relief. So is she going to be a real judge or some kind of joke? She’s a comedian, not a singer or a musician. I’m kinda flummoxed here.”

Others on the Internet, including posters on the AmericanIdol.com forums, said they were pleased that DeGeneres, who admittedly has no formal music experience, just a passion for tunes, would join Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi on “Idol.”

…with the excellence SITD readers expec, rather than my customary yawn of disinterest.

TRUTHER: “Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA; his code name was Tim Osman.  That means he works for the US, and thus 9/11 was an inside job”.

MITCH: “Wow.  It’s all coming together.  Hey – Ho Chi Minh started out as a US ally against the Japanese, too!  That means…the Tet Offensive was an inside job, too!”

Biden says B interrupting the President’s speech was declasse’:

Vice President Joe Biden says a Republican congressman’s outburst during President Barack Obama‘s health-care speech Wednesday night “demeaned the institution.”

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” after Obama said extending health care to all Americans would not mean insuring illegal immigrants.

Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday, Biden said the incident made him “embarrassed for the chamber and a Congress I love.”

Yeah.  Don’t be embarassing Congress with any of those outbursts, or Joe Biden will clutch his pearls and say “tut-tut”.

UPDATE: Dang Google.  I keep searching for “biden clutching his pearls and tut-tutting over Dems booing during state of the union”, and get nothing.  Google must be broken.

Anyone have a line on where I could find a couple of rear strut/spring assemblies for an ’01 Taurus relatively cheap?

Leave a comment, or (if you know the addy) email me, send me a message.

Please.

Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan recently observed that the U.S. is duplicating many of the policies implemented during the Great Depression. Why? Mainly because politicians lack “any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work.”

The U.S. shows up almost exactly in the middle of the pack.

The world’s oldest sophomore, Tom Friedman, has discovered the wondrous advantages of one-party autocracy over our current system of government. No, I am not exaggerating.

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

If you’re new to Friedman’s writing, or perhaps still nostalgically influenced by his presumably serious position as a columnist for the New York Times, you might think this is merely an attention grabbing opening lede which will be smoothly integrated into an otherwise sensible opinion piece as he develops his thoughts on this. You possibly also still believe in the Easter Bunny.

(more…)

The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (or MOB) has been a going concern for five years now.  And we’ll be having our fifth anniversary gala this Saturday at Keegans, just west of Hennepin on University in northeast Minneapolis, from 6:30 ’til whenever we’re done (usually around 11 or so).

Over the years, a bunch of myths have sprung up around the MOB and our semiannual parties.  I’m here to shine the exhilarating light of truth on them, that they wither and die and let us concentrate on the fun stuff.

Myth 1: The MOB is a conservative group: Nope.  We are rigorously non-political.  Oh, we’ve had some folks from the leftymedia claim otherwise, but they are, to put it as civilly as they deserve, morons.  Indeed, it’s almost (but not quite) bad form to talk politics at our meetings.  Whomever you are, we wanna see you there. 

Myth 2: The MOB is affiliated with the “Mob” – the derogation that many “town hall” and “tea party” protesters have assumed: Nope.  We were the MOB five years ago.  And while many members of the MOB are members of the Mob, there is no actual connection.

Myth 3: MOB parties, being full of conservatives, are dull dull dull: Again, nope.  For starters, see Myth 1; we’re not a “conservative” group.  Now, over the years we’ve had a few leftysphere wags – Tim McKay, Two-Putt Tommy – sniff and claim that MOB parties just have to be dull, since there’s conservatives there.  So compare and contrast for yourself; a party where (to pick a random selection of past attendees) James Lileks, Bob Davis, Sarah Janecek, Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, Sisyphus and Katie McCollow are holding forth, versus (to pick a typical “Drinking Liberally”) being stuck in a room with Ken Wiener, “Minnesota Observer” and “Tild”?    I’d say that myth is busted.

Myth 4: You can’t smoke cigars at Keegans anymore: The patio may or may not be closed on 9/12 – but there’s always the sidewalk.   I’m totally there.

Myth 5: There’s a $10 cover: Wrong-o.  There’s no cover charge.  Just buy a beer or a shot from among Keegans’ best-in-town assortment of brew, wine, and hard stuff.  And the food is better than a jab in the face with a sharp stick, too!

Myth 6: Parking in Northeast Minneapolis sucks: Well, it’s no myth – Minneapolis is doing its best to make sure everyone who comes to town has to pay a ticket.  But the ramp behind Keegans is actually halfways reasonable – better than the meters (which are enforced, rigidly, until ten).

Myth 7: We have to wear nametags: Never, never, never.

So join us Saturday night!  We’ve had a ton of RSVPs – perhaps the biggest pre-party response we’ve ever gotten – so by all means, come on down!  University, just west of Hennepin, starting at 6:30 or so.

The San Francisco Bay Bridge is closed while engineers fix a cracked “eyebar” – a structural member that transfers weight to the main supports.

Here’s hopeing they do a good job of it.

Or at least, let’s hope they do a better job than the reporters who are writing about it.  Because since the 35W River Bridge collapsed, it seems everyone is a structural engineer.

Eyebars are known to suffer from fatigue cracks.

The same design was used in the Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis, which collapsed in 2007 and killed five people.

Well, maybe in the same sense that both bridges had roads running over them.  The 35W bridge was a conventional arch-truss bridge with, to the best of my knowledge, no eyebars; the Bay Bridge is a combination of trusses and a suspension bridge.  Completely different structures.

But other than that…

And while normally I’d point out that the collapse killed thirteen people, I’m assuming the other eight disappeared due to California’s taxing and spending.

With Mitch already holding the title of the Twin Cities blogosphere’s best feminist, I feel it incumbent upon me to fill the role of the post-modern, liberal, lesbian, iconoclast on this blog. Or at least to emulate the television viewing habits of Camille Paglia…

I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it.

I have a feeling our respective definitions of “old movies” differ quite a bit (for example mine would include the earlier Harry Potter movies which seem to broadcast every other weekend on the ABC Family channel and can be viewed with clear conscience without shooing the kiddies from the room). But otherwise that television watching description is uncannily like mine.

Anyway, Camille has a few other thoughts this week, including a rather extended smackdown of her fellow Democrats over their fumbling of the health care issue. It’s worth checking out.

Via email – the speech Barack Obama should give, but probably never will:

My fellow Americans:
 
I speak today to my people – the Baby Boomers – because we have a lot to answer for. 
 
The WWII generation is rightly known as The Greatest Generation.  Young people put off college, marriage and families to spend years tramping around the world and dying in far-off Hell-holes.  Their efforts brought down two empires and brought freedom to future generations worldwide.  Then they came home and built the greatest wealth-generating economy the world has ever seen.
 
We, their children, squandered it all.  We were so full of ourselves, so sure of the nobility of our goals, so confident that our wisdom exceeded the ages, that we tore down everything they had built through hard work and sacrifice and replaced it with entitlements.
 
Now those same entitlements threaten to bankrupt our country. We need to grow up.  Right now.
 
I’m asking Congress to cut government spending for everything that isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution as being the job of the federal government.  Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, transfer payments and subsidies of every kind – all gone.  Naturally, since the federal government no longer spends that money, taxes should go down.  What government no longer does, people will have to learn to do for themselves, just as our parents did.
 
This will be hard.  It’s hard to give up the gravy train.  There will be sob stories everywhere.  But if we don’t suck it up now, there will be even more sob stories later.  The Greatest Generation looked world-wide disaster in the face and charged in to fix it.  Can we do less?
 
Goodnight, and may God bless us all.

To be fair, he’s really the third president who should have given this one…

Sarah Palin on why socializing healthcare is just plain dumb:

Common sense tells us that the government’s attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats’ proposals “will provide more stability and security to every American.”

With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it’s a promise Washington can’t keep.

Well, we thought “we” – the nation – knew it.  And yet the Dems are in power. 

For now, anyway.

Let’s talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats’ proposals “will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control” by “cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . .”

First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such “waste and inefficiency” and “unwarranted subsidies” in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn’t think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that “in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”

In fairness to the Administration, anything’s possible when you’re in fantasy world and/or making Chicago-style campaign promises.

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs.

In other words, empanel a new bureaucracy to tame a bureaucracy… 

In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”

Ah. That statement the Dems keep trying to stuff down the memory hole.

Read the whole thing.

She’s a beauty-pageant winner and lingerie model…

Miss Hodge was spotted by the high street store when she won second place in this year’s Miss England contest, after wowing the judges with her performance of a rifle drill, a first for the beauty pageant’s talent section.

…who can also go all Jack Bauer on terrorists:

The part-time model was awarded a medal of bravery for disarming an insurgent while on a tour of Iraq at the age of 18 and was recently promoted.
 

‘We arrested an Iraqi suspect we wanted to question and were taking him back to the prison when we were involved in a road accident,’ she said.

‘Our vehicle rolled over and when I came round the Iraqi had escaped and had our weapons. I knew I had to do something or he would have shot us all dead. It was a real do or die moment.’

‘My training just kicked in and I managed to disarm him, get the weapons back and restrain him.

If I were a lesser guy, I’d say something like “that is the luckiest terrorist in the world”, but I really am better than that.