Since the American left has made “spot the code word” a national sport, let’s see if we can spot any in today’s Strib editorial which, as I predicted (but didn’t write) yesterday, follows immediately on a story from yesterday that seemed to try to make the case for govenrment takeover of city trash systems.

That government is the answer to all things to the Strib Editors is no big shock.  That they are resorting to name-calling to try to make their case.

So let’s highlight the code words as we read the editorial:

It’s a funny thing about garbage: We need to get rid of it, but we’re often possessive and parochial about who takes it away.

As opposed to “perfectly happy with the status quo”, and “sick of paying taxes”, of course.  Couldn’t let that into the story…

Headline: “Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil:

There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Subsidies for the Saudis.

Call it “Cash for Monarchs”.

Eva Ng, the independent businesswoman running as the GOP-endorsed candidate for Mayor of Saint Paul, faces an uphill battle.

By all accounts I’ve heard, she shredded Chris Coleman in their non-debate “forum” the other night.  This should surprise nobody; in a one-party city like Saint Paul, DFL politicians can go their entire careers without ever debating anyone about anything more substantive than “who was more sad when Paul Wellstone died”.  Conservatives debating Saint Paul DFLers is like the SEALs attacking Smurftown; people who’ve had to hone their information and skills over decades of being an oppressed minority going up against people whose only response is autonomic chanting (“Public Option Now!  Public Option Now!”) or ad-homina isn’t pretty. 

But Ng still has to face an entrenched bureaucracy and media that is in the bag for the status quo, as well as a population that is very heavily dependent on government, either as an employer, a benefactor, or a cornerstone of their worldview.

Still, she’s the first real conservative to get to the November election in forever.  And she needs your support.

The PiPress has a brief op-ed from Ng explaining her candidacy:

I am running for mayor of St. Paul because I believe that my experience over the past 30 years in turning around difficult situations, making the most out of every dollar, and influencing others to help “right the ship” is exactly what St. Paul needs right now in the mayor’s office.

We must pull St. Paul out of this downward spiral by first freezing property-tax and fee rates, followed by finding ways to reduce them. We’re operating on a budget that is $100 million more per year than four years ago. There is enough money to fully fund our essential needs first. Those essentials are fire, police, emergency medical services, and roads. Then, we’ll prioritize our “wants” and fully fund the most desirable of them based on input by the citizens. The lowest priority of the “wants” will have to take a back seat until funds become available.

The whole thing is worth a read.

And if you can possibly help Eva out, by all means do.

Mark Steyn, writing about Hollywood’s instinctive cuddling up to Roman Polanski, hit a bunch of the usual points:  Hollywood’s boundless hypocrisy (they all but ran Mel Gibson out of town for crimes immeasurably less than Polanski’s), Polanski’s horrible life (not only losing three generations of his family between Hitler and Charles Manson, but having his surviving mother essentially reject him after the war to keep his stepfather happy).

That, alone, is worth the price of admission.

But at the end came a great point that’s easy to neglect amid the human cost of the rest of the story; Hollywood’s treatment of the likes of Polanski debilitates and infantilizes “art”:

Earlier bad boys – Lord Byron, say – were obliged to operate as “transgressive” artists within a broader moral order. Now we are told that a man such as Polanski cannot be subject to anything so footling as morality: He cannot “transgress” it because, by definition, he transcends it. Yet all truly great art is made in the tension between freedom and constraint. In demanding that an artist be placed above the laws of man, Harvey Weinstein & Co. are also putting him beyond the possibility of art. Which may explain the present state of the movie industry.

When art not only becomes an arm of the establishment (see:  most jazz since 1970, when arts grants replaced heroin as the main inspiration for jazz music in America), but when the establishment infantilizes artists, it takes away much of the reason to have art in the first place.

As Steyn notes, Polanski’s work since he went on the lam fits the pattern; except for The Pianist  (which was fantastic), it’s been fairly forgettable stuff.

Worth a read.

There’s a war brewing in the Twin Cities metro.

It’s about  trash.

About 2/3 of the communities in the Twin Cities allow or require (depending on your point of view) residents to contract their own garbage hauling.  Saint Paul is one of them.

The rest either run it as a city service, or contract out pieces of the city to private haulers.  Minneapolis treats trash as a city service.

And at all levels governments, lobbing shots about “street repair” and “the environment”, are trying to grab that turf:

When Bill and Mary Simms got a bill for $1,800 to fix the street outside their home, they knew whom to blame — all those garbage trucks.Each week, at least five trucks rumble past to collect trash in their Fridley neighborhood. They show up as early as 6:40 a.m., waking the retirees.Bill Simms, 67, doesn’t understand why his community needs so many haulers when people in next-door Columbia Heights get by with just one. And he’s furious he has to pay to fix streets worn down by all that tonnage. “I’m fed up,” Simms said. 

It’s a common complaint in the Twin Cities, where most communities leave it to residents to hire their own trash collectors. In St. Paul, which is served by 17 haulers, officials could vote on changes this month.

Many homeowners prefer to pick their own haulers, believing that they’re getting the best rate. But they’re wrong, a study commissioned by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) concluded. 

For a 30- or 60-gallon container, those homeowners typically pay at least 50 percent more for garbage service than residents in communities like Minneapolis with organized systems, the study found.

There are other costs, too. City engineers worry about the price of fixing roads damaged by garbage and recycling trucks. Residents complain about the racket, the danger to children, and the emissions.

This is of course nothing but a push to land more unionized government jobs.

Thankfully, some people get it.  People were getting angry about trash long before we had tea parties:

But anytime officials talk about change, they confront angry constituents. Not one community has retaken control of trash collection in nearly 20 years, according to the MPCA study.

Mark Campbell, mayor of Sauk Rapids, was stunned when local officials debated how to reduce the number of garbage trucks on city streets last spring. He said it was the “ugliest meeting I’ve ever participated in.”

And as the honeymoon ends for Hope and Change, let’s hope it gets “uglier” – where “ugly”=”citizens actually exercising their first amendment right to tell government what pier to jump off of”.

I’m going to try to find the MPCA study and the Minneapolis trash budget, and see if I can answer the questions the Strib didn’t.

When my kids do what is described in this cartoon, I respond exactly as the protagonist does, only verbally.

It does irritate them.  But it hasn’t stopped the behavior.

Yet.

Berg’s Fourth Law of Media/Sports Inversion says:

The Vikings will be contenders until the moment the local media actually believes they will be contenders. At that moment – be it pre-season or Week 12 – the season will fall irredeemably apart.

I probably wrote that during one of the Twins’ “rebuilding” seasons.  It probably accounts for them, too.

A month ago, the local sports media were writing the Twins off; I thought “Hm.  Berg’s Fourth Law rarely lets us down”.

So will it affect the playoffs (and I say that knowing that it sounds like I’m saying “it’s all about me and my little aphorism”, which isn’t…well, yes, it is my intent)?

The local media may be catching on; at least a few of them seem to be working to injecting some sobriety into the proceedings:

The Twins went 0-7 against the Yankees this year, and they are 5-26 against the Yankees in New York under Gardenhire, counting the postseason.

But…

Of course, the Twins haven’t faced the Yankees in three months, and they will enter this series riding a 17-4 streak.

“We can play with anybody; we’re playing pretty good baseball,” Gardenhire said. “We’re not afraid, I can guarantee you that.”

We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

As Minneapolis’ confronts the idea that its city-driven “improvements” have been either squibs (Gaviidae Common, Town Square) or catastrophic failures (Block E), it’s good – and, for some Minneapolis city councilpeople, counterintuitive – to note that free enterprise is still alive.

Holy Land, a long-time destination for people who like great mediterranean food and groceries, is booming along a tatty stretch of Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis:

Holy Land Brand Inc. CEO Majdi Wadi furthered the commercial renaissance of Minneapolis’ Central Avenue corridor and the Minnesota manufacturing economy last week when he opened the state’s first hummus factory, a sparkling-new facility that produces 60,000 eight-ounce containers a month in what had been a crummy bar on 25th Avenue NE.

“We paid $1.25 million for the old Sully’s Bar [in 2007], which was appraised at $950,000 by the bank,” said Wadi. “We were shocked by the drugs and prostitution. But now, Holy Land has another business that is good for our neighborhood and city.

Sorry to hear that Sully’s – which used to make a grrrreat burger – fell on hard times.  But then, the whole neighborhood had been sliding, even when I lived there.  Good to hear that opportunity still knocks. 

Of course, when someone starts a business in Minneapolis, there’s a good chance a fiscal conservative gets his wings:

“Hennepin County rewards me by raising the property taxes. That’s OK. Wells Fargo loaned me some money, and we’re going to make a good business.”

Anyway – someone tell Michael Moore that capitalism seems to be doing pretty well by the Wadis:

A few blocks away, Holy Land, which now employs 140 people in its store, deli, restaurant and other businesses, expanded its bakery in refurbished quarters that was another derelict building at 1617 Central Av. NE.

“The revitalization of Central Avenue is immigrant-based,” said Paul Ostrow, the longtime City Council member from northeast Minneapolis. “Majdi has blazed the trail since he started making these investments more than a decade ago. He’s global with his imports and exports. He’s a success. And he also cares about Northeast.”

In an interview in his cramped, nondescript office last month, Wadi, 44, a Palestinian immigrant, repeatedly expressed thanks to neighbors and America.

Maybe we should thank him.

Yes!  Thank you, Mr. Wadi!

Note to the city of Minneapolis: don’t thank Mr. Wadi the way Saint Paul and the Met Council is “thanking” all the asian immigrants who’ve done similar work along University Avenue – by building a rail line that runs ’em all out of business.

It was about six weeks ago that, frustrated by the reams of viruses that my kids unwittingly downloaded onto my home computer, I finally downloaded and installed Ubuntu Linux, after years (literally a decade) of thinking about it.

Reaction six weeks in?

What took me so long?

(Now I hope I haven’t jinxed myself…)

…but, uh, yeah – Go Twins!

Tired of investing your hard-earned ad dollar in skeezy bloggers that just get you in trouble with the feds?

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday took steps to make product information and online reviews more accurate for consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating that testimonials reflect typical results.

Note that I have never once given a distorted review of a product or service.

(Or an undistorted one, for that matter.  How the heck does one get that kind of business, anyway?)

The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

Heh.  Heh heh.  Heh heh heh heh.

The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.

The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected.

Here at Shot In The Dark, we’re not especially worried; we’ve never made a nickel for anything that wasn’t either clearly an advertisement or strictly disclosed.

Not that Doug, Roosh and I aren’t willing to try.  Just saying – we don’t need no steeking FTC to tell us our ethics.

Try us!

Betty McCollum (DFL MN4) confirms it – “bipartisanship” is just for Republicans! (emphasis added):

“Now is the time to pass a public health insurance option. Now is the time to expand access to quality health care, control rising costs, keep American businesses competitive, and improve the health of the American people,” she told the crowd of assembled party activists.

“You know there is a lot of talk about how Democrats need to reach out to Republicans and work for a ‘bipartisan’ health care bill. I am sick and tired of talk of a bipartisan health care bill — that’s just a plan for less health care for people in need and more profits for corporations driven by greed,” she said.

But McCollum – famous for ducking any debates and avoiding any dissent, as befits a “representative” from a one-party city who has never needed to remember that there are at least two sides to any issue – does make one illustrative point:

“Since I’ve been in Congress there have been a number of historic bipartisan bills — historically bad!”

She’s got a point; “bipartisanship” is the plea of the weaker party, or at least of the party that doesn’t need to reach across the aisle – which, as a Saint Paul DFLer, is all McCollum knows; the “bipartisanship” of ramming our agenda down the opposition’s throat.

Of course, McCollum is in the majority now.  She can afford to talk like a petty absolutist tyrant.

That “Majority” thing’s gotta change. 

Which is why your vote matters in 2010.  When McCollum is in the minority again – then she’ll see the value of “bipartisanship”. 

Let’s hope a new Republican majority doesn’t make that mistake again.

Over at MPR’s NewsCut, Bob Collins – who seems to have become the online conscience of Minnesota Public Radio News – ably sums up the Travis Hafterson story

If the news media here had treated Pvt. Travis Hafterson like a dog, it would’ve been an improvement.

 Hafterson – a 21 year old Marine from Circle Pines – came to Minnesota to seek treatment for crippling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) contracted, the story goes, while on one of his two tours of duty in Iraq.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have included the Corps in his plans – and so after a crew of volunteer mental health professionals and lawyers got him certified for commitment, a group of Marine Military Police caught up with Hafterson virtually at the door to the treatment center, arresting him for desertion.

The alternative online news sources around here who fancy themselves the future of journalism — MinnPost, The Uptake, and City Pages, for example — proved that they can shrug their shoulders as well as the big boys. Of all alternative online sources of news, only Rick Kupchella’s new Bring Me the News “covered” the story.

Kupchella – a former Channel 11 anchor – has indeed covered the story (Here, here and here).

And there’s a lot to cover, if you are indeed a discerning, curious news organization.

PTSD is not something the services like to talk about – especially combat-focused, infantry-heavy services like the Marines.  But PTSD and warfare go hand in hand – and the services have always had a hard time walking the line between denial and treatment; George Patton’s infamous slapping incident first illustrated the military’s schizophrenia on the subject; in the great scheme of things, it’s hard to tell how much the military has improved its approach (UPDATE:  Although, as noted in the comments, they certainly have improved it).

Beyond the obvious?  One factor of PTSD is that it seems to occur far less often in troops that see themselves as being in control of their situations.  Highly-trained elite troops – like SEALS, Deltas, SAS/SBS troopers and the like – that tend to be in situations where they control the initiative of their battles, who tend to be “in control” of their combat situations, are observed to be less prone to PTSD than regular troops.  On the other hand, troops whose situations don’t ooze control have been observed to be more susceptible to PTSD; American “replacement” infantrymen in World War 2, who joined their units alone, usually in the dead of night with no orientation to combat, had frighteningly high psychological as well as physical casualty rates (which was a big part of the reason the US Army dispensed with that system of replacing casualties).

Given that – does it say something about the nature of the war we’re fighting today?  That perhaps just “sending more troops” isn’t the whole answer to Obama’s gathering quagmire in Afghanistan?

Much more later.

When people ask me “how do I make it as a blogger?” (which, admittedly, doesn’t happen every day – but it does happen, pinky swear), my response is always some variation of “write something every day”.  Get into the discipline of writing something – a big magnum opus on your favorite topic, pictures of your cat, a quickie fisk of something you disagree with – anything.  The discipline is what brings the improvement – not the other way around.

With that in mind, I direct you to one of the great unsung bloggers in the Twin Cities – and when I say “unsung”, that’s misleading, because Speed Gibson has an audience of discerning consumers, largely but not exclusively on the subject of education.

Sunday, he had a S reminder for everyone on the right; there are still surprises out there:

We on the right might be hidebound ourselves in thinking the media will always wear the union label. But many of these reporters and editors have kids in school themselves, and must face some union reality themselves. Regardless, they’re generally good people. The lack of results despite decades of promises and billions in targeted programs may have finally left them with no other conclusion.

Who is he talking about?

Read the article.

Which is the whole point of this article…

To: Paid “independent” “alternative” water-carriers for George Soros (et. al)

From: Mitch Berg, actual independent

Re:  Your Latest Meme

So first, we had “truther” – people, usually Democrats (including, during the 2004 election, as many as a third of Democrats, according to one survey which, to be fair, didn’t distinguish between respondents with questions and the real true believers), who believe that George W. Bush and the US government were behind 9/11.

Then came the “birthers” – people, usually Republicans (including, during the past election, as many as a quarter of Republicans, according to one survey which, to be fair once again, didn’t distinguish between true believers and those who are merely curious about the flap about Obama’s birth certificate), who question President Obama’s constitutional qualification to be President.

The meme is thus set; taking an oddball conspiracy, tacking “-er” onto the end to connote a sense of unthinking, unreasoning credulity, even insanity.

Which brings us to the latest manifestation of this meme – the “Tenther“.

Of course, while 9/11 and Birth Certificate conspiracies are easily and often hilariously debunked, the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution has the inconvenient properties of being both part of the United States Constitution and, as it happens, an inconvenient hurdle (for those who see the Constitution as “hurdles” to big government) to the current Administration’s more gigantistic plans (i.e., most of them).
Which explains, I suspect, the Alinskier and Soroser fingerprints on the whole meme.  Otherwise, the left’s most-considered response is “States Rights?  Why, that means you favor slavery!”

That is all-er.

Daily Kos traffic is off by about 2/3 since the election (granted, “off” from 80 million visits a month to a still-pretty-immense 20-plus million)…

…while conservative front-runner Hot Air (cohosted by my radio partner Ed Morrissey, and at whose double-A farm club “The Greenroom” I write):  up sharply – to the point where it’s the first conservative site to pull ahead of Kos in many, many years.

Could it be that people are purging the kool-aid?

…about Obama’s honeymoon being over and his political capital falling to mere human levels…

…might be an eventual end, sooner or later, to all those “Obama asks moms to go back to school” banner ads.

Just saying.

On the one hand, Iris Dement always looks like she’s singing with a mouthful of sour lemondrops.

On the other hand, she’s pretty amazing.
On the third hand, this song is the very definition of “bittersweet”.  It reminds me of how I feel about my own hometown, in a lot of ways.  For that matter, it reminds me of how I feel about Saint Paul, these days.

On the fourth – it’s a gorgeous version of the song, especially with Emmylou Harris sitting in on background vocals.

Minneapolis is getting rid of some of its maze of one-way streets in downtown – most notably Hennepin and First Avenues.

The change is intended on one level to help make Minneapolis’ downtown streets more pedestrian-friendly, and on another to make the streets less-resemble spillways to allow commuters to escape the failed downtown area quickly at the end of the work day.

A story in the Strib focuses on the affect the change is having on downtown’s iconic  First Avenue nightclub. The problem, according to the cluster of management and staff interviewed by Strib music critic Chris Riemenschneider, is that the change (adding bike and parking lanes on the new northbound lane on First Avenue) obliterates the bar’s load-in area, requiring bands to haul their gear a block to get in the door.

The whole story – in part inasmuch as it is actual reporting, rather than “music criticism” – is very much worth a read.

But for me, the payoff came near the end, in conversation with Warehouse District city councilwoman Lisa Goodman, whose answer to the plan’s critics is the classic urban politician’s retort; “Why should we let actual unintended consequences alter the Master Plan?”

Well, not quite in those exact words:

Goodman was not sympathetic to the club, though. She accused First Ave’s staff of solely looking out for its best interests. She also said its soon-to-be-obsolete load-in area — hooded meter spaces that have been in use as long as anybody at the club can remember, and for which the club pays about $120 per night — is not even a legal loading zone.”Why should they get any preferential treatment?” Goodman asked.

Oh, I dunno, Lisa Goodman.  Perhaps because in the 39 years the club has existed in that space, the City of Minneapolis in its infinite wisdom has inflicted countless miseries upon that part of downtown – City Center, the Conservatory, Block E, the Target Center, the forced condemnation of an entire block of nearby downtown real estate to make way for a corporate HQ for a company that is quietly building a “real” headquarters  out in Brooklyn Park, light rail – and yet First Avenue has improbably managed to survive, a tiny, improbable island of the free market in a sea of failed government meddling?

Because they’ve earned a little “preferential treatment” or, as we call it in the real world, “a concession from the Master Plan”, due to having survived the infinite wisdom of Lisa Goodman and the rest of the gabbling hamsters that run Minneapolis for all these years?

The debacle of California is perhaps the most grossly underreported story in America today.

It should be no surprise that I suspect that this is because it’s a story of the failure – indeed, catastrophic collapse – of exactly the form of liberal, “everything-to-everyone” government that Obama and his Democrat majority want to bring the rest of us, and the media just can’t wrap their arms around admitting that just yet.

The London Observer comes oh, so close:

“If California was an experiment then it was an experiment of mass irresponsibility – and that has failed,” says Michael Levine.Nowhere is the economic cost of California’s crisis writ larger than in the Central Valley town of Mendota, smack in the heart of a dusty landscape of flat, endless fields of fruit and vegetables. The town, which boldly terms itself “the cantaloup capital of the world”, now has an unemployment rate of 38%. That is expected to rise above 50% as the harvest ends and labourers are laid off. City officials hold food giveaways every two weeks. More than 40% of the town’s people live below the poverty level. Shops have shut, restaurants have closed, drugs and alcohol abuse have become a problem.

Standing behind the counter of his DVD and grocery store, former Mendota mayor Joseph Riofrio tells me it breaks his heart to watch the town sink into the mire. His father had built the store in the 1950s and constructed a solid middle-class life around it, to raise his family. Now Riofrio has stopped selling booze in a one-man bid to curb the social problems breaking out all around him.

“It is so bad, but it has now got to the point where we are getting used to it being like this,” he says. Riofrio knows his father’s achievements could not be replicated today. The state that once promised opportunities for working men and their families now promises only desperation.

The story catalogues the woes – overwhelming and unsustainable social spending, the downside of sprawl – fairly capably…

…but, being from the Observer – the web end of the Labour-Party-oriented Guardian – it still misses the point:

California has long been an incubator of fresh ideas, many of which spread across the country. If America emerges from its crisis a greener, more economically and politically responsible nation, it is likely that renewal will have begun here. The clues to California’s salvation – and perhaps even the country as a whole – are starting to emerge.

Take Anthony “Van” Jones [yes, that Van Jones – but that’s not the point.  Bear with us, here – Ed.], a man now in the vanguard of the movement to build a future green economy, creating millions of jobs, solving environmental problems and reducing climate change at a stroke.

All in the future tense.

We see where this is going, right?

Jones believes California will once more change itself, and then change the nation. “California remains a beacon of hope… This is a new time for a new direction to grow a new society and a new economy,” Jones has said.

It is already happening. California may have sprawling development and awful smog, but it leads the way in environmental issues.

And in this entire, otherwise-fascinatingly-thorough piece, nobody connects the two points!  Nobody notes that California has clawed billions and billions from taxpayers and businesses and gutted the state’s business climate and employment base…

…to pay for the feeble “promise” of “Green Jobs“?  To pay for fripperies like solar panels while the state’s business are packing up and leaving to escape rolling blackouts and confiscatory taxes?

To pay for a vision of government that will perpetuate the problem rather than ever fix it?

And it’s mutual; Capitalism has Moore’s poorest opening since his 2002 Oscar-winning exercise in fraud, Bowling for Columbine.

How bad?  Even Woody Harrelson beat out Moore over the weekend which, given their relative box-office performances over the past year, is a little like Yemen beating the US in basketball.

Hey boys and girls! Sometimes comedians can say the funniest things!

Please read the following quote; another example of an entertainer confusing his or her entertainment value with political relevance; Garrison Keilor:

“Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.”

Now, tell us what’s wrong with that quote (economics majors: shhhhh.)

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” –  Brian joins John to kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is out on assignment; I’m up next, from 1-3.  I’ll be joined by Rep. Keith Downey to talk about the DFL’s job-killing mania.  We’ll also be getting exclusive first word from the GOP Convention’s straw poll.
• 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 these guys from sixth grade)

…is a jilted, pissed off President, with a bent for Socialism, who can now refocus on bringing our nation to the brink of insolvency.

South America gets its first games: The 2016 Olympics are going to Rio de Janeiro

Chicago was knocked out in the first round — in one of the most shocking defeats ever [emphasis happily mine-JR] in International Olympic Committee voting. Even Tokyo, which had trailed throughout the race, did better — eliminated after Chicago in the second round.

I feel bad for Chicago. Nonetheless, Mr. President, and with all due respect:  In your face!

You will have to find other less public forms of payback to your cronies in Illinois…and you would be well advised to brace for impact as more “shocking defeats” are almost certainly in the offing for you, sir.

Why yes, I overslept just a tad.

My usually 5-6:30 AM posting schedule is pretty much a ritual for me – so when something comes along to screw it up (like needing sleep), it throws everything off.

More posting, most likely, late in the afternoon.