The Administration has decided to put a selection of “accused” terrorists on trial in civilian criminal court.  In Manhattan.  (We have to call them “accused” or “alleged”, now, they’re in ).  Which means that all that talk about the Geneva Convention we were treated to over the past eight years was, as I pretty much suspected, buncombe.

As the descendants of Lance Ito, Marcia Clark and Johnny Cochrane race for New York to get jobs on the defense team in their attempt to make a mockery of both American justice and the last eight years’ efforts against terror, purely for political points (the only reason for this is to dig out dirt on the Bush Administration), the Administration is trying to defend the decision convince the American people that that quacking green thing with webbed feet and a bill isn’t a duck.

And on what grounds does Holder defend the decision?  Some obscure legal precedent?  Some unacknowledged quick in counterterror doctrine?

Er, no (emphasis added):

Attorney General Eric Holder is defending his decision to put the professed Sept. 11 mastermind on trial in New York — and urging critics of the plan not to cower in the face of terrorists.

Ah.  We’re not irritated at the crass political opportunism, the huge bone being thrown to the Kossacks on the taxpayer time, or the very real risk that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 planners will be turned loose by a hung New York jury (didn’t Holder ever read Bonfire of the Vanities?).

Nope. It’s that we’re”afraid”.

I was going to wait at least until next year to decide – but the title of “worst president of my lifetime” is looking like a lock, here.

Check this out.

OK. Closer to Zero.

G. Edward DeSeve, who runs the government’s economic recovery program, says the errors are “relatively few” and “don’t change the fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data.”

Correction: The fundamental conclusions The One can draw from the data.

Thursday, November 19, is National Ammo Day – a great day to not only restock the home arsenal, but to send a tacit, affirming message that your liberty is not here to be fed upon by vermin, whether in ski masks or wearing three piece suits.

Ammo is scarce, these days; every day’s been Ammo Day since Obama and his pack of gun-grabbers took office.

All the more reason to get out there on Thursday.

(And if you have a good line on .45ACP, by all means do holler…)

Yesterday was the first day for the “Northstar” commuter rail service.

Now, commuter rail is one of those areas where I break with some of my conservative friends – with a big, red asterisk.  Unlike Light Rail, which is a pretty universal money pit, Commuter Rail – heavy cars using existing right of way and rails – is relatively inexpensive.  The forty mile Northstar cost less than half of what the seven mile Ventura Trolley did, and is currently coming around a quarter of the ludicrous, city-destroying Central Corridor’s price tag at the moment.  Had the Met Council opted to buy used rolling stock (cars and locomotives) and build its stations on the cheap, and had gas prices remained high and pumped up the ridership, the Northstar could have hypothetically been revenue-neutral and self-supporting in relatively short order.  Which, for a government program, ain’t chicken feed…

…provided you get all those “ifs” out of the way.  The Met bought new rolling stock (enh) and as always used the stations as an excuse to subsidize local artists, and the price came in a good third higher than it might have.

Still, for those who are trying for whatever reason to recalibrate their lives around the shiny new toy, madness awaits:

Trains were on time — the first one arrived three minutes early — but the first day was not entirely free of glitches. At Target Field, the doors of the 7:10 a.m. train didn’t open for a few minutes, so its more than 300 passengers were stuck inside. Once they made their way upstairs to the Hiawatha station, light rail wasn’t there to greet them because of a mechanical problem. A replacement Hiawatha train left the station at 7:25.

During the afternoon rush, there were some frantic dashes for closing doors, some doorway stumbles and even a few people who missed trains and had to wait for the next one. Only one person missed the final train, arriving at Target Field two minutes late on a connecting light-rail transit train.

Metro Transit has a way of letting you down; I can’t count the number of times, back when I did a lot more transit, that buses would run late or sometimes not at all, or schedules would be inaccurate, or bus stops would be incorrectly marked; for that matter, in one year I had two buses break down on me in mid-trip.  Carrying a bike with you in one of the bike racks, I came to realize, is a bit like having a lifeboat on a ship.

Susan Sullivan of Andover hopes not. “When I got to the Government Center, it was 10 minutes later than my bus ever got me there,” she wrote in an e-mail. “And I will be paying $2 more each day for the ‘privilege’ of riding this.”

And then there are those for whom ideology swerves into irrationality:

The sole outbound morning train to Big Lake had 44 customers when it headed northwest at 6:05 a.m. Kate Pound of St. Paul, was one of them and had one of the more complicated commutes. She rode her bicycle to a bus stop, transferred from the bus to a light-rail train and then to Northstar at Target Field. She departed the Big Lake station via a Northstar Link bus to her job as a geology teacher at St. Cloud State University.

“It’s great, it’s cheaper, I’m doing the right thing in terms of my carbon footprint,” she said. “But what if I’m late and miss my connection in Big Lake? As long as I don’t get stuck, this is the way to go.”

Well, no, Ms. Pound – moving to Saint Cloud would be the “right thing in terms of your carbon footprint”.  What you’re doing is salving your precious environmentalist ego, while continuing to live the high-density urban life you no doubt came to love while attending Macalester.  If I were to guess, anyway.

Anyway – if you’re taking the train, enjoy.  It’s a less-dumb option than the Ventura Trolley, and vastly less criminally stupid than the Central Corridor is going to be.

Last week, in my post “Our McClellan” – in which I compared Obama’s dithering in Afghanistan to that of George P. McClellan,  some of the feedback said “look, the President is thinking things over and not being rash, unlike the previous resident”.

That might be true – although Obama doesn’t have the eighteen months Bush had to spend on his deliberations before invading Iraq – but only if he comes out of it with the right decision, as opposed to more concerned inaction.

But when even the LAtimes gets it, you know the Administration is in trouble:

Obama was right to insist on a full review of whether U.S. interests are better served by expanding the American military footprint in Afghanistan or shrinking it.

But now, two months into his second “comprehensive policy review,” after eight Cabinet-level meetings and several slipped target dates, the president still hasn’t made up his mind.

At some point, “deliberation”, especially in the face of an ugly-and-deteriorating situation like Afghanistan, becomes “paralysis”.

In George W. Bush, we had a president who shot first and asked questions later. In Barack Obama, we have a president who asks the right questions but hesitates to pull the trigger.

And there the LATimes is conjecturing based on facts not in evidence.  We have no idea what questions he’s asking.  But we have no idea if he’s “hesitating to pull the trigger”, or if he can’t figure out how to get the pointy things into the gun.

Is he even qualified to make the decision?  Does he have beginner’s flop-sweats?

Three weeks ago, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Obama of “dithering.” At the time, the charge sounded premature and partisan — but now some of Obama’s own supporters have begun to wonder whether Cheney was right.

Heh.

Last week, the president’s indecision became even more apparent after White House aides let it be known that he was asking the military for more “exit strategies” — what one official called “off-ramps” — in case things go badly.

Read one way, it sounds like he’s more interested in covering his butt than anything.

And that all of us who said he wasn’t ready for prime time were right.

SCENE:  11AM in the editorial board room of Minnesota-based politics blog MNPublius.

ZACK: (sitting in an overstuffed leather chair, sipping from a snifter of brandy as SEAN walks into the conference room).  Hey, Sean.  How’s it going?

SEAN: (pouring a scotch as he takes a seat by the highly-polished oak table) – Hey, Zack.  Just looking at the resumes from all of Dusty Trice’s minions.  Now that he’s closed shop, they’re all looking for work.

ZACK:  Huh.  (takes a sip, as SEAN feeds a ream of  resumes into a nearby paper shredder).  Where’s Matt? 

ZACK:  He’s texted me.  He’s just coming in from the parking ramp.  He had to get the Prius fixed.

SEAN: Ah. 

(JEFF enters the room, takes seat)

ZACK:  So what’s new, gentlemen?

SEAN:  Well, I spent Friday trading emails with Paul Harris of the London Observer.  He’s doing a piece on female conservatives, and he heard we were the authorities on Michele Bachmann.

ZACK:  And he didn’t go to Dump Bachmann? 

SEAN:  He’s a Brit journalist, but he’s not insane.

ZACK: Excellent!  So did you send the new glossy talking point sheet?

SEAN: Yep, the one that calls ’em all crazy and dangrous.  Or dangerous and crazy.  I forget.  Anyway,  I had to break open a new box of them, but yes.  I did. 

MATT: (enters room, yelling over shoulder as he takes a seat) And Consuela?  Have all my calls and texts held.  And get me a double-skim goat chai, stat!

CONSUELA (from anteroom) Si, senor Matt!

MATT:  Hey, guys.

ZACK:  Hey, Matt.  And did you send the ugliest picture of Bachmann you could find?

SEAN:  Oh, yeah.  I had to dig deep, but I finally found one that almost was too bad to be an Avidor photoshop. 

JEFF (sotto voce to MATT): “Avidor?”

MATT: Ken Weiner.

ZACK:  And you gave him a phone interview?

SEAN:  Er, huh? 

ZACK:  A phone interview.  We always do phone inter…

SEAN: Right.  The phone interview, I know.  I thought Jeff was doing the interview?

JEFF:  Um, no – I thought Matt was doing it.

MATT:  Um, no, I was busy doing oppo research on “Ben” and “Mall Diva”.  Er, hang on – Zack, I thought you handled all foreign media…

ZACK:  Oh, crap.  That means…

CONSUELA:  (Enters room, carrying bundle of newspapers) I brought the newspapers, sirs.  (places them on table, backs from room).

ZACK: (leaps to feet, looking agitated, thrashes through pile of papers) Independent…Independent…Indep…AH!  Here it is!  (flips through paper as SEAN, JEFF and MATT gather behind him to read).

SEAN:  There it is!

MATT:  Oh, crap:

 “It is hard to think that people take her seriously. But on a national level it is happening. It scares me,” said Aaron Landry, a senior correspondent at MNpublius.com, a Minnesota-based politics blog.

ZACK:  “Senior Correspondent?” 

MATT: {{Facepalm}}

SEAN:  Who the hell told him to call himself…

JEFF: Jeezus, Landry – you’re a blogger! 

MATT:  Good goddess; he’s Fecke’d us.

ZACK: (yells out the door) Consuela!  Get Cartman on the line!

SEAN:  (takes long drink, puts down glass, holds head in hands) Oh, man – we’re never gonna live this down.

(And scene).

Trafalgar Square in London is one of London’s great memorials.  The tribute to Lord Nelson and his epic naval victory at Trafalgar is one of the signature sites in one of the world’s great cities.

The square has a series of  “plinths” – the technical term for statue-stands.  Three of them are occupied by statues of King George IV, Henry Havelock and Sir Charles Napier. The fourth of the plinths, built in 1841, has never been permanently occupied by a statue.  Over the years, it’s been the scene of stunts, demonstrations, and often occupied by temporary statues, some of them debuting on the plinth before being put in their permanent locations.  Some of them were of genuine British heroes; others, during the reight of London’s longtime socialist wackjob mayor wackjob mayor Ken Livingstone, were more, er, unconventional.

But the latest occupant of the Fourth Plinth is a statue of a hero that is someone obscure to Britons, and even moreso to Americans – even though he played an absolutely crucial role in the survival of western civilization seventy years ago.

It’s Air Vice Marshal Keith Park, a New Zealander who commanded the Royal Air Force’s “11 Group”, the fighters responsible for defending London and southeast England during the Battle of Britain.   Had 11 Group failed in its mission, Hitler would have won air superiority over the English Channel and the southwest of the UK.  It would have cleared the way for an invasion of the UK which, given the British Army’s badly-depleted state after Dunkirk, would likely have led to a Nazi victory in World War II.

The picture shows him in a fairly typical pose, pulling on one of his flight gloves as he got ready to climb into his personal Hawker Hurricane to keep up the relentless schedule of touring his airfields, checking up on his men, the hundreds of 20-25 year old pilots that died by the score, but saved the day for the UK and, incidentally, all of us.

I don’t know if it’s accurate to call Mary Wakefield, columnist for the London Independent, any more or less knowledgeable about history than any other “journalist”, here or there.  I don’t know if her knowledge of history is any more addled than that of any other Briton or American.  I don’t know if her giggly, show-biz-centered “mind” is any more  or less acute than that of any of the other bobbleheads in our “gatekeeping” class.

But reading this column about the Park statue…:

So Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park has made it up on to the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square at long last. Arise, Sir Keith, good job. I salute you as I cycle past, for without you (I’m told) the Battle of Britain would have been lost and the free world a goner. OK, I’m lying. The truth is, I’d never heard of Keith Park GCB, KBE, MC before the campaign to plinth him began, and I still can’t quite figure out what all the fuss is about.

…I got a bad feeling about the answer.

Being one of the western world’s elite gatekeepers, one might think an enquiring mind like Mary Wakefield’s could have figured it out.

The campaign was frighteningly well organised and well funded: field marshals, MPs, Tony Benn, the vice-chancellor of Oxford ? they’ve been at it for years, pushing for Park, but why? Surely there are other, better known and just as heroic or deserving candidates.

Other than millions of other British World War II veterans?  Or the millions of civilians that survived the German blitz, the firebombing of London?  Perhaps – but it’d get crowded on that little plinth.

What about the Queen? There are other questions too. What were the Parkies thinking when they chose to depict their hero pulling on what looks like a pre-op surgical glove?

{{facepalm}}

And why such intensity and lack of humour?

We can forgive Mary Wakefield.  While the Battle of Britain may have lacked the gravitas of, say, the Spice Girls breaking up, it may have slipped her mind.

Clive James, writing for the Beeb, has a long, excellent  response.

SCENE:  One day in 2010.  President Obama speaking to a crowd at the Ground Zero memorial at Hiroshima:

(OBAMA steps to the podium)

OBAMA: Uh, welcome, ladies and gentleman.  Before I get started, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to my good friend and world-wide hero Al Gore for the efforts he’s making to, uh, save the world.  He’s sparing no effort to convince people, including some of the efforts that, uh, your people, uh, Emperor Akihito, perfected during your father’s time. (Akihito shifts nervously on his feet).  I think the world owes him more than just the Nobel Peace Prize.  I’d suggest perhaps they make him pope.  (Robert Gibbs starts clapping; stops after a few awkward seconds).  He’s also reaching across the aisle to call, uh, Sarah Palin “gung ho“. Anyway. Just a big shout out. 

Crowd claps nervously.

OBAMA: OK.  Now, Hiroshima.  I’d like to start by thanking my lord and liege, Emperor Akihito, for inviting me here. 

OBAMA turns, bows deeply.  Stays bowed long enough to tie shoes with tongue.

AKIHITO Nods.

OBAMA (remains bowed)

AKIHITO. (clears throat)

OBAMA (remains bowed)

AKIHITO: Er, mister president?  Carry on.

OBAMA: Thank you, sir.  At any rate, I’d like to express my offical sorrow and apology for the mistakes on the part of my predecessors that led to the inhuman attack on this city, and for the deaths of all the women and chidren who were  for the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who werefor the deaths of all the women and chidren who were…

TECHNICIAN: (kicks teleprompter)

OBAMA: …hope and change. Thank you.

(Japanese string band plays “Hail To The Chief”)

I’m not a big “sun ‘n beach” person; I’d be at least as happy touring the Highlands as vegetating on a beach in Cozumel.

But I am from North Dakota, so you know I’m a maritime kind of guy.  The salt water is in my veins.  And so while I’m not a “cruise” kind of guy, necessarily, I do love ships.  I think if someone refitted a World War II destroyer as a cruise ship – for a smaller, hardier, less BS-amenable passenger base, natch – I’d dig it.

As opposed to, say,  this thing:

The 16-deck Oasis of the Seas docked Friday at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. It set sail from Finland to Florida in late October.

Sixteen decks.  It’s like the Riverside Plaza Apartments, at sea.  Ew.

The massive $1.5 billion vessel is nearly 40 percent larger than the industry’s next-biggest ship and five times larger than the Titanic. It has 2,700 cabins and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members.

And that, ladies and gents, is just too damn big. It’s like going to sea amid a Vikings game at the Dome.

The ship also features various “neighborhoods”—parks, squares and arenas with special themes. One of them will be a tropical environment that will include palm trees.

I’m wondering if the steerage “neighborhood” includes “crack cabins”?

Joe from St. Paul’s Como neighborhood writes:

Who’d have thought that Democrat efforts since Obama was elected are morality-based, not reality-based?

As an economy, we want badly managed car makers and banks to fail and good ones to thrive.  But Democrats want to take political control over decisions about their product lines and employee compensation which we all know can’t possibly work as efficiently as the market-based model, which includes both the reward of success and the penalty of creative destruction for failure.

As a nation, we have too much invested in housing stock and industries related to it.  When housing slips, electricians lose their jobs.  And with an aging Baby Boomer population, we’re likely to see a major demand shift away from building McMansions toward one-level senior homes.  It’ll be a giant shift in a huge sector of the economy.

But Democrats don’t want to support downsizers, they insist on subsidizing first-time homebuyers and continue the CRA madness of requiring lenders to lend money to people who can’t pay it back.

As a member of the world community, we want all nations to live in peace – or at the very least, to leave us in peace.  Toward that end, we have sought international arrangements to promote stability for the last half-century.  But Democrats go out of their way to insult our traditional allies, embolden our traditional adversaries, and ignore the most flagrant kooks on the planet as they acquire the most destructive weapons ever known, all the while apologizing for our country’s founding religion and our past errors.

It’s the mindset I’m talking about, the worldview that says if person A kills you, it’s an ordinary offense and not really his fault, more a peccadillo really; whereas if person B does it, it’s a hate crime that must be persecuted relentlessly and unmercifully.

I don’t know the word for it, but there should be a term that describes a political mindset determined to allocate punishment and reward based on the political status of the actors rather than the results.

As expected, Andy Birkey of the Minnesoros “Independent” was at last week’s “Appeal to Heaven” fundraiser for You Can Run But You Can Not Hide, a Christian group that evangelizes in the most hostile environment in America today – public schools.  (Pointless and unneeded disclosure that serves more as inter-station out-shouting: YCRBYCNH’s Bradlee Dean and Jake MacMillan co-host Sons of Liberty, on AM1280, which follows Ed and I on Saturday afternoons).

Everyone expected Birkey to show up, because the special guest speaker was Rep. Michele Bachmann.  If Rep. Bachmann stops for a hamburger, the “Independent” is there.

Now, I didn’t attend the event – I had a school thing for one of my kids to go to.

But I was drawn to this bit here in Birkey’s coverage (with emphasis added by me):

The almost exclusively white crowd had assembled at the Sheraton ballroom in Bloomington to raise funds for the ministry

“Almost exclusively white?”

Part of me wonders if Birkey can qualify or quantify the phrase “almost exclusively white”.  How many non-white people were there?  One?  Ten? Five percent?  How does one contextualize “almost exclusively white” in a state that is, let’s remember, almost exclusively (over 90%) white (about four percent black, three percent Asian and about a fifth of a percent Hispanic).

The other part of me wants to stand on a soapbox and remind the world…

…that however “almost exclusively” white the crowd at YCRBYCNH’s rally may have been, it is and shall always be less so than the white, college-educated, middle-class staff of the Minnesoros “Independent” will ever be.  The Mindy’s staff, with the brief exception of Abdi Aynte, has always been vastly whiter than Minnesota as a whole.

For those of you who keep count of such things.

This is how a recession gets fixed…

A crop of potentially groundbreaking companies is emerging from the wreckage of the Great Recession. No question, some will blow up, and others will fail to reach their potential. But the downturn has done little to dampen the entrepreneurial spirit. During the first half of this year, angel investors financed 24,500 new ventures, 6% more than during the same period last year, according to the Center for Venture Research. The overall amount of money going into startups has declined, but the figures suggest that this year will see the birth of roughly 50,000 companies with enough promise that someone is betting money on them. “It may be that this is the best time to start a company,” says Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship.

History shows that great companies are often built during bad times. In 1939, at the tail end of the Great Depression, two engineers started Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in a garage in Northern California. Silicon Valley itself was largely created during the nasty recession of the mid-1970s. During that decade, entrepreneurs laid the groundwork for the boom of the 1980s, building companies that pioneered three new industries: Atari in the video game business, Apple (AAPL) in personal computers, and Genentech in biotechnology. “The only people who venture out in tough times are on a mission, which is what you need,” says Michael Moritz, managing partner of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm that invested in Apple back in the ’70s.

The entrepreneur; the capitalist, seeking the American dream of wealth and freedom, has always been the seed of who we are as a nation, our standard of living and what we’ve done for other nations. Despite Michael Moore’s attempts to discredit it, and Barack Obama’s attempts to destroy it, capitalism is still our only hope for recovery.

The silver lining in The Great Recession…you can afford to invite more in-laws over this Thanksgiving.

This year’s survey, released yesterday, put the cost of feeding 10 people at $42.91. The grocery bill fell 3.8 percent, the steepest reduction since its 4.3 percent drop at the start of this decade. The slump was also the first since 2004.

Don’t miss the click-through to a graph of Class 1 Whole Milk prices – fun!

It’s The Unemployment, stupid.

The announcement a week ago of 10.2% unemployment is a significant political event for President Barack Obama. It could well usher in a particularly serious crisis for his political standing, influence and ability to advance his agenda.

Double-digit unemployment drove Ronald Reagan’s disapproval ratings in October 1982 up to a record high 54%. It was only when unemployment dropped to 7.3%, roughly two years later, that he was able to win a landslide victory over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election.

Alas, Barack Obama will not have the same opportunity that Reagan did – he doesn’t have the tools (the ideology)…or the people.

Barack Obama is all-in already with his “Stimulus Plan” in the sense that

1) He wants us to think that it’s working, and it is not.

2) As such, he doesn’t want us to think that his Stimulus Plan made things worse, which it did.

Had Barack Obama given America the message that they should have had, that they deserve, it would have been something like this:

Dear fellow Americans: You’ve lived beyond your means and so has your government, and now we must all pay the painful price as our economy returns to a more normalized state. We in the federal government will do what we can by extending unemployment benefits and such, but beyond that, as much as you will hear otherwise from those on the far left, stimulus programs and other gargantuan government spending programs will only worsen and extend the inevitable pain we must all go through to right the ship.

Instead, he doubled down on the failed fiscal policies of George Bush and simply dug the hole deeper.

Now the hole is filling with water and Barack Obama can’t get out.

Obama’s only option politically is to lobby for more stimulus spending and sell the American people on the efficacy of the last one. The former will fall on deaf ears as the deficit becomes an issue with the American people; the latter as the din of high unemployment washes over Obama’s Teleprompterings^™.

His dithering on Afghanistan and misappropriated focus on health care “reform” will be transferred to his economic impotence, and so on and and so on.

A look at more detailed data shows why Mr. Obama’s ratings are likely to drop even further.

A CNN poll released Nov. 6 found that 47% of Americans believe the top issue facing the country is the economy, while only 17% say its health care. However, the bulk of the president’s efforts over the past six months have been not on the economy but on health care, an issue in which he continues to draw negative ratings.

In a Rasmussen Reports poll taken after the House of Representatives passed health-care reform by the narrowest of margins last Saturday night, 54% of likely voters say they are opposed to the plan with only 45% in favor. Furthermore, in the all-important category of unaffiliated voters, 58% oppose the bill. That’s one of the reasons why so many moderate Democratic House members opposed it.

The CNN poll also shows that in addition to health care, a majority of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, unemployment, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. Put simply, there isn’t a critical problem facing the country on which the president has positive ratings.

The only way the President gets out of this alive is to willfully and publicly abandon the failed liberal approaches to virtually every issue that has presented itself in his short Presidency.

What are the chances?

Mr. President, Mr. Rock.

“Hello, nice to meet you.”

“Likewise, Mr. President.”

Mr. President, Mr. Hard Place.

“Hello, nice to meet you as well.”

“It’s an honor, Mr. President. Thank you for inviting us into your Presidency. Should we get started?”

2012.

Indeed.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• The King Banaian Show – On AM1570, “Business Radio For the Twin Cities”, from 9-11.  King’s off on assignment; they’ll be doing an encore presentation today.
• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I are up from 1-3.  We’ll be looking ahead at 2010, the 9/11 trials, and all of the rest of the week’s news. 
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM on AM1280!

(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!

…yesterday morning as I buttoned my shirt and tied my tie.

Why haven’t we heard anything about immigration lately?

And then we did.

Napolitano pronounces US border more secure now

…as evidenced by the fact that we’ve built some more fence,  enlarged the government’s payroll and, uh, because of the crappy economy no one is coming here anymore.

Janet, speak up! I didn’t catch that last part.

No one is coming here anymore.

Ah. It’s another Quoniam inquam sic from the Obama administration. So I took it and threw it on a pile of other rubbish which includes  “this Recovery Act has worked as intended,”  “America wants health care reform and is willing to pay for it” and  “[Cash for Clunkers has been] successful beyond anybody’s imagination.”

Then again, the time to fortify our borders may have already passed. The terrorists may already be here.

…meanwhile, the Pope is scanning the sky for alien life. Either this is related, or all the world’s leaders have lost their marbles.

I just got back from MCing the MN Fourth District GOP Fundraising dinner tonight.  In addition to the traditional silent auction, we had a very appropriate motivational speaker – he spoke about “resilience”, which is something Fourth CD Republicans get a lot of practice with.   If you get a chance to see Roger Revak speak, do it.  Just saying.

We also met some great people; Gubernatorial candidates Senator Dave Hann, Representative Tom Emmer and former State Auditor Pat Anderson came by, as well as a slew of local and district candidates.

It was a lot of fun, which the Fourth is always good at.  Things are tough in the Fourth – but I have  a hunch better days are coming.  The DFL is doing a bad enough job that everntually even the voters’ll figure it out.

(more…)

It should go without saying that Hurricane Katrina caused nearly unprecedented problems in New Orleans.

Of course, problems can lead, if one is lucky, to opportunities.  One problem/opportunity to befall New Orleans was the  complete destruction of the New Orleans public school system.  Although given the system’s performance before the hurricane, “destruction” was a pretty relative term:

According a New York Times report, New Orleans public schools were “among the most abysmal in the nation before the storm”. In the 2004 Louisiana General Exit Exams (GEE) for high school students, 96 per cent of New Orleans public school students scored below “basic” in English and 94 per cent scored below “basic” in maths. The public school district was corrupt and debt-ridden.

The NOLA Schools, presented with an unprecedented “clean slate”, literally had to start over.  One of the key initiatives was to allow, indeed promote, the formation of charter schools.  These schools are public schools,  funded with each attending student’s share of public money allotted to them, which are “chartered” by the local school board or the state department of education or some other governing body depending on the state’s charter school law 

 Five years later, PBS reports on the experiment; this is a transcription of a “NewsHour” piece by PBS’ John Merrow.

In March, President Obama sent Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to New Orleans, which some consider the national laboratory of the charter movement. Leading the city’s charter transformation is Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas.

PAUL VALLAS, Superintendent, Recovery School District: Well, I’m a believer in schools having the freedom and autonomy to make decisions that are in the best interest of the children. And so I support charter schools, because charter schools are a vehicle for achieving that type of freedom.
 
As principal of a charter school, you are responsible for everything. I make sure instruction is in place, and its effective, and its aligned with the state standards. I make sure that the budget is balanced and that we have money for payroll.

The report touches on one of the big advantages of charter schools; notwithstanding the slanders of some of their critics; the accountability loop between student, parent, teacher, principal and board is usually within one building, and decisions happen almost immediately, as opposed to the months (and sometimes years between School Board elections) at the sclerotic public districts.  Parents are not only a simple phone call from their locally-elected board members – they are much more likely to be on the board than at any big public district, especially at a big, politicized urban district.
 
The change has been immense:

 SHARON CLARK, Principal, Sophie B. Wright Middle School: As principal of a charter school, you are responsible for everything. I make sure instruction is in place, and its effective, and its aligned with the state standards. I make sure that the budget is balanced and that we have money for payroll. I make sure that we continue to register kids and that our attendance works.

JOHN MERROW: Principal Clark has used her power to make some significant changes.

Where are the boys?

One of her first decisions was to separate the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades into single-sex classes.

MALE STUDENT: At this age, boys get distracted. So by us being all boys, we’re more focused on our work.

FEMALE STUDENT: When you have boys in your class, you got to be, like, trying to impress them, but if you just in school with some girls, you’re just not worrying about it.

Try to pull that off in a public school without having to tangle with a big, Union-owned, “elected” city-wide board, a dozen special interest groups (who only tangentially have the kids’ interests at heart, if at all); you’ll be wrangling with lawyers until your kids’ grandkids are in school.

But it was the right thing to do.  It got done.  And the kids are better off for it.

FEMALE STUDENT: At the beginning of the year, I was going to Marshall. And it was like the principal couldn’t control his students. There was fighting. So I told my mama I didn’t want to go there.

When I came here, I felt like it was much better. The teachers were showing you a lot of attention, make sure you understand your work.

This parallels my experience almost perfectly.

Remember the debate on “merit pay” for good teachers, to encourage great staff to do great work, and which the Teachers Unions have bottled up and delayed, in every case, since I was in high school?

Done deal!

JOHN MERROW: Principal Clark rewards her best teachers with bonuses of up to $5,000. Darlene Rivers teaches math.

DARLENE RIVERS: With my first year with the test, my fifth-grade students scored the highest in the district. Your test scores have to be in the 90th percentile, and you get a monetary award, and I have received that. Yes, I have, I received that, and it really came in handy.

JOHN MERROW: Principal Clark does all the hiring. And if it doesn’t work out?

SHARON CLARK: If they don’t have the mission that we have in mind as part of their mission, we are free to what I call freeing up a teacher’s future.

JOHN MERROW: She means she fires teachers who don’t measure up. Clark’s authority seems to be making a difference.

SHARON CLARK: Our school is performing in the top 10 of the city. We are actually performing higher than some of the magnet schools that have selective admissions, and we don’t.

JOHN MERROW: In fact, 9 of the 10 top performing schools in the district are charters.

Amazing what a little actual empowerment, local control, and reward for effort as opposed to mere seniority can do.

There are, of course, downsides; charter schools are excellent places for the vast majority of students.  But they are frequently very small, working with very low budgets; they don’t have access to local education levies, and they can’t float bonds for facilities (at least in Minnesota), so rent comes out of most schools’ allotments.

And that means some of the services that some parents counted on in the big, public districts are harder to come by:

 JOHN MERROW: National studies support Branche. Although there are many outstanding charter schools, reports show that overall charter success is mixed. [Although you need to make sure you’re comparing apples and apples]

Branche has further reason to be wary: She says some charter schools are being unfair to disadvantaged children.

CHERYLLYN BRANCHE: Parents are seeking places for their children who may have physical handicaps, mental or emotional handicapping conditions, and they’re not being accepted by charters. I get referrals from specific principals of charter schools. “Go to Banneker. Tell Miss Branche I sent you. Go to Banneker.”

JOHN MERROW: It’s what school administrators call “dumping,” transferring those with special education needs or just kids who are behaving badly to other schools.

You’re getting kids who are being pushed out of charters…

CHERYLLYN BRANCHE: Correct.

JOHN MERROW: … more special-ed kids than you…

CHERYLLYN BRANCHE: Correct. Yes, exactly right.

JOHN MERROW: So the charter movement is hurting you.

CHERYLLYN BRANCHE: It is hurting children.

Well, no.  A bureaucratic practice is hurting some children, children who are by definition both outliers and who are also, currently, incredibly-badly-served by traditional big public schools.  Something does need to be done to try to reach these students…

…but they are, again, by definition, exceptions to the rule.

The whole thing is worth a read, provided you remember it’s written with the skin-deep attention to fact that you get with TV reporting, even from PBS.

If, say, Ed Morrissey – my friend, radio colleague and longtime fellow Northern Alliance blogger – were to write something in incredibly dubious taste, and I wanted to do something to say “I’m not with him on this”, what would it be called?

Disavowing?

Repudiating?

Chiding?

You have a wide variety of English verbs to use for the purpose.

One of them would not be “Back Off”.  To back off of something implies you’ve done something in the first place to “back off” from.

Kevin Diaz, writing at the Strib’s “Hot Dish Politics” blog, notes that Rep. Bachmann has repudiated/chided some of the people who brought some fairly inappropriate placards to her demonstration on Capitol Hill last week:

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who’s been getting a lot of media attention since her starring role at a D.C. rally against the House health reform bill last week, has been distancing herself from the Holocaust imagery displayed by some of the participants in the event.

“Sadly, some individuals chose to marginalize tragic events in human history, such as the Holocaust, by invoking imagery and labels which have no purpose in a policy debate about health care,” the Minnesota Republican said in a statement she has been sending out to reporters in recent days.

Of course, whenever you go to a demonstration that is open to the general public, you’re going to draw a thin film of nutters.  They turned out to all three of the Minnesota Tea Parties – a tiny few of them, anyway (although the leftymedia coverering the event did in fact focus on them to the exclusion of the 99% majority of pretty regular workadaddy hugamommy people who showed up – a dishonesty far worse than Fox News’ inflation of the Bachmann rally’s numbers in its own way).   And if you’re a conservative, you get used to having to drag liberals back to the real conversation; to too many of them, the odd nutter at a conservative rally is like a shiny piece of tinfoil to a kitten.

The placard in question, the leftymedia bleated, was one showing piles of bodies at a concentration camp after World War II; it equated Obamacare to the Nazi healthcare plan applied to Jews.  As I noted in this blog last week, it was pretty stupid, partly for its historical ignorance, and more for the opening it gave the leftymedia to portray the event as if every protester and Rep. Bachmann was carrying one. 

(I also noted that it’s great, absolutely fabulous in fact, that the left…

…has gotten so very conscientious…

…about not wanting to cheapen the horror of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime…

…for moronic political effect.

Well played, Left!

At any rate, it was a stupid placard.  And Rep. Bachmann repudiated/chided it:

“These regrettable actions negatively shift the focus of the current discussion on this issue,” her statement continues. “The American people deserve an open and honest debate to ensure the best possible solution to our health care problems, and I agree that these unfortunate instances are wholly inappropriate.”

Of course, Bachmann’s demonstration drew blood, and the left realizes it needs to marginalize it as much as possible – in this case, by trying to convince the world that a duck is not a duck, or in this case that a moron with an inappropriate placard is really an official statement by Rep. Bachmann (in the same way that the right ascribed the many, many trivializations of Naziism that became such a cottage industry on the left, to the left):

Bachmann’s statement comes after U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, a Jewish Democrat from Long Island, called on her to apologize for the offending images at the Capitol Hill rally, which she’s been largely credited with inspiring and organizing.

 Yadda yadda.

At any rate, this is all background to the real point of this post.  Now, with newspaper headlines in print editions, headlines are usually not the responsibility of the writer/reporter who does the actual story.  It’s a copy editor who writes those.

I’m not sure who writes the headlines on the Strib’s online publications – if it was Kevin Diaz, or some minion in the copy or web department.  But someone put a title on Diaz’ post:

Bachmann backs off from Holocaust images

Er, yeah.  But Bachmann didn’t use any Holocaust images.  She never mentioned the Holocaust, to my knowledge, in the history of the healthcare debate, much less at her demonstration.  It was someone in the audience.

How can Bachmann “back off” something she, herself, never did, said or implied?

And if your answer is “the leader is responsible for the actions of even his/her most demented follower”, then I’ll await your collective apology, from President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer and Howard Dean on down, for the repeated, slanderous “Nazi” references that conservatism and conservatives have endured this past nine years.

Deal?

So I’ve had a Hot Gear Friday post written about my favorite bit of hot gear – my highly-hotrodded 1960 Fender Jazzmaster – for almost a year now.

But can I get my daughter – who has the family’s only camera – to take a Glamour Shot of it?

Grrrr.

Soon.  Really.

In the early years of the US Civil War, after some initial disasters, Lincoln appointed George McClellan as the commander of the Army of the Potomac (which was to the main front of the Civil War as CENTCOM is to the main front of the War On Man-Made Disaster War On Terror today.

McClellan was a popular general with a long track record of military excellence, first as an engineer, then as a logistician – both of them vital jobs.  He also did something very few other Union Generals managed to do in the early years of the Civil War – won some victories.  His invasion of the Union-leaning parts of Virginia (which created what we call West Virginia today) was one of the very few successes the Union could point to in the early years of the war.

And so Lincoln appointed him commander first of the Army of the Potomac,and then of the entire Union Army.

He then spent his entire time in command “polishing the cannonball” – seeing to training and logistics (which were, to be fair, vitally important to the Union’s eventual success, in a long-term kind of way).  But his actual job – engaging and defeating Robert E. Lee – was another matter altogether. Terrified of the consquences of defeat, he spent months dithering, seemingly avoiding battle, overestimating Lee’s force to the point where it paralyzed him.

It came to a head at the Battle of Antietam, where Union forces stemmed Lee’s first attempt at invading the North.  Indeed, they perched at the verge of defeating him…

…but McClellan dithered again.  The situation called for aggressiveness, for taking the battle to Lee.  McClellan instead hesitated, afraid that Lee’s force was vastly larger than it really was.  And so Lee escaped – turning what could have been a crushing defeat into bloody tactical draw.

Antietam has kept armchair generals busy for over a century, now.   But the lesson was fairly clear; there is a time to think, and a time to act.  Exactly what that time is isn’t always clear to theman on the ground, but it exists.

President Obama’s decision not to decide yet on what to do in Afghanistan is such a situation, and some people know it:

The president’s long decision-making process has led to accusations of “dithering” by his Republican opponents. The White House says the decision is too important to hurry, but the wait is causing growing exasperation in London and other European capitals.

One British source said that the absence of a clear strategy from the US, the largest troop contributor in Afghanistan, is hampering the British Government’s attempts to maintain public support for an increasingly unpopular conflict.

“The truth is that until we have some clarity from Obama, it’s going to be hard for us to explain to people what we’re doing there,” the source said.

Britain is urging Hamid Karzai to send more Afghan forces to Helmand province to support British troops there.

Mr Karzai was returned for second term this week after an election widely agreed to have been flawed and corrupt.

“We need the Americans to have a clear message for Karzai about what he has to do, but that’s just not there at the moment,” said the British source.

The private frustrations of British ministers and commanders were echoed by General Lord Guthrie, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, who said the American deliberations had brought the Afghan mission to a pivotal moment.

“It’s a tipping point because of President Obama’s delayed decision on whether to send more troops,” Lord Guthrie said.

McClellan was terrified of defeat; Obama is terrified of the political ramifications of defeat (on his watch) or pursuing victory (among his base).

I’m no general.  I’ve never even served in the military.  But you don’t have to be George Patton to read George Patton; when your troops are in harm’s way, you either get them out of harm’s way, or you commit to win the war. You either do what it takes to make the sacrifice in blood and treasure worthwhile, or you get out of it.

Bush did the former in Iraq – while the Administration botched the Iraq War from 2004 through 2006, he risked the political capital it took to win the war afterwards (allowing that defining “victory” in a counterinsurgency is a bit of a moving target – something that the American left has always had trouble with).

Obama’s definition of “win” seems to be a different thing altogether.

The left is going to try to spin this…:

It’s easy for me to imagine the right calling Obama a coward over this, or an America-hater, or any one of the sundry attacks reserved for our President. But to me, this is Obama doing exactly what we hired him for — weighing all of the options with a critical eye, and demanding that his advisors give him some outside-the-box solutions.

…as a sign of “intelligence”, as if second-guessing McChrystal for purely political reasons is a sign of military genius, or – as Jeff Rosenberg did above – paint Obama as a victim.

But the real decision is fairly binary; win, or leave.

I bag on the Democratic Party.  A lot.  I do it for a lot of good reasons; the party tries to make virtues out of much of the worst of human nature, and to cheapen much of what is the best.  If you put a gun to my head and said “become a Democrat or die”, I’d reponse “use a big bullet”.   I bag on the DFL on principle; it is one of the reasons I started this blog; I am utterly successful at it, and have no plans of stopping.

Now, many of my best friends, and both of my parents, are Democrats.  Heck, I used to be one.  So in many cases I respect their points of view – but the Democrats and the DFL are my rhetorical beeyotch.

But in the unlikely event that, say, my daughter Bun – the more politically-involved of my kids so far – were to not only become a Democrat, but a committed one who did a great job (say, managed a successful State Senate campaign for a DFLer candidate), what do you suppose I’d do?

Disown her?  Pffft.  Not at all.   I’d be proud of her.  Oh, I’d question her political choices; but if she decided to take that course in her life (presumably after a brain injury) and excelled at it, what parent wouldn’t be proud?

And it’s not a big deal – because within certain limits, family comes before politics.

Seems obvious to most people.  But some liberals apparently aren’t “most people” .

Benjamin Sarlin – apparently a slumming press-release writer – quoting Tarryl Clark in the “Daily Beast“:

[She and Michele Bachmann] have three things in common: We’re women, moms, and we both have sons in AmeriCorps,” Clark said. “The difference is I’m proud of mine and we should be proud of our young adults giving something to the community.”

This is an old meme; Bachmann has criticized Americorps – the Clinton-era social-engineering temp program – on basic principle.

Harrison Bachmann, one of the Representative’s sons, has joined an Americorps-related teaching program.  The usual pack of suspects is tut-tutting and tittering.

So is the liberal mind so intolerant and incapable of cognitive dissonance that they think a parent can’t be proud of a son’s mission and achievement, even if he/she’s opposed to the bureaucracy for which he works?

And how utterly, pointlessly, creepily ghoulish is it that Tarryl Clark would even bring it up?

Are Tarryl Clark and the DFL that desperate against Bachmann?

Note to Republicans:  If you want to have Democrats labelling you  “Teh ReTHUGliKON Heppocreet!” and hopping up and down like a bunch of dogs when a new carton of spoiled meat comes to the kennel, just approve of some facet of something that you criticized in a completely different context.  It’ll make their pathetic little day.

Remember the key dictum in Media-Republican Party relations – which is such a truism I may codify it as another Berg’s Law: any Republican can be “the good Republican” , until they’re a threat to the Democrats.

So the piece the other day by Dan Balz in the WaPo might actually be good news for TPaw, in a backhanded way; if you interpret it that way, it means he is a contender the Dems are nervous about:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is widely regarded as one of the Republican Party’s rising national leaders. The runner-up to Sarah Palin to be John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, he is a conservative whose blue-collar roots, amiable personality and two terms as governor of a traditionally Democratic state would seem to make him a natural to help his party attract the kind of swing voters who are always fought over in presidential elections.

So far so good.

But the Pawlenty who has stepped onto the national stage in recent months has said and done things that have other Republicans wondering about his instincts and his sure-footedness as a prospective 2012 presidential candidate. Pawlenty could learn from the earlier mistakes of one of his potential rivals for the GOP nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Last week, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Pawlenty was asked repeatedly whether he welcomed Sen. Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican to vote for the Senate Finance Committee health care bill, in the GOP.

And he ducked it.

Because it’s a stupid, stupid question.  Tim Pawlenty has no say over whom the voters of Maine send to Congress and under what label.

At a time when some conservatives are insisting on purity within the ranks and others say the party must truly be a big tent, Pawlenty ducked the question. He hemmed and hawed, but couldn’t bring himself to say “yes” — suggesting that he believed “no.”

What Pawlenty should have said was “get real, Scarborough.  “Purity” and “Big Tent” are both abstract ideals that don’t exist in the real world, and those (invariably) unnamed Republicans on both side are talking about abstruse principles of “purity” and “inclusion” that mean very little to real voters.  What we need – and I plan – to talk about is making conservatism speak to those in the middle.  Which is, indeed, how I became first the nominee, and then governor, in my state; convincing voters, after decades of irresponsible spendthrift DFL and pseudo-DFL governors, that fiscal resoponsibility was a good thing.  So – is that “purist”, or is that “big tent”, you over-promoted gasbag?”

(I’ll forgive Pawlenty for leaving that last bit out).

Balz’ big problem seems to be that Pawlenty – whom Balz labels a “conservative” early in his piece – says and does things that are “conservative”:

Most recently, he endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd congressional district, but he acted only after former Alaska governor Sarah Palin had turned the special election into an intraparty test of strength.

Pawlenty said there is no deliberate effort to move to the right. “In general, I’ve governed as a conservative in Minnesota, so being conservative isn’t like a new development or a revelation,” he said.

Now, let’s step back a bit.  Balz thesis is that Pawlenty, in saying things that deliberately court the resurgent conservative movement, is acting like Mitt Romney.

Romney, of course, was accused of being a stealth liberal for having socialized medicine in Massachussetts, among other things; being nearly the sole Republican in office in a state can, and usually will, mean “non-conservative” stuff has to happen.   Pawlenty’s conservatism has flaked around the edges under the pressure from two DFL-controlled chambers in the Legislature; he’s had to adapt, giving way on some peripheral issues (ethanol subsidies) while staying largely true to the big-picture (holding the line on tax cuts and, as much as reasonably possible, the budget).  He’s had to compromise, which is why it’s called “politics” and not “dictatorship”. 

Balz eventually cuts to what passes for a chase – the comparisons with Romney:

Still, there is something Romneyesque in all this. Four years ago, Romney lurched to the right in preparation for his presidential candidacy. He did it on social issues, where his prior support for abortion and gay rights left him vulnerable on his right flank.

Right.  Romney put on the Big Bad Conservative suit to go for the nomination.

But if you can say one thing about Governor Pawlenty, it’s that he’s never “lurched”.  The closest we’ve come is the 2002 nomination race against Brian Sullivan, where he had to put aside his pragmatic, legislative persona (he’d been the House Minority leader) which was slightly moderate by nature and necessity, and run to the right to get the nomination from Brian Sullivan.

Since then – for seven years – Pawlenty has been very consistent on a policy and rhetorical level – which is pretty astonishing, considering the changes in the Minnesota legislature since he took office (in 2002, the GOP controlled the House and made it close in the Senate; today the MNGOP is in the minority in both chambers).

Pawlenty has a consistent record of opposition to abortion and gay marriage. In his case, he appears to be catering to the conservative, populist anger on the right, which is challenging the party establishment and attacking Obama in sometimes extreme language.

The real risk for Pawlenty, as Romney learned in his unsuccessful 2008 campaign, is losing his true voice and his authenticity.

Answering that particular bit requires accepting a few yawning gaps in reason.  First, that opposition to Obama is primarily rooted in “anger”.  There is anger, to be sure – but the vast majority is a thin veneer of pique atop a mass of reasoned disagreement.  Obama’s tax and spending proposals will be ruinous; the healthcare reforms will destroy our healthcare system; the President’s foreign and war policy is pusillanimous.  One may be angry or reasonable in addressing this – or a little bit of each.

Second – that it’s “inauthentic” for Pawlenty to acknowedge this.  It makes no sense; it’d be akin to asking John Kerry to ignore all that post-2000-Florida-recount angst.  No serious person suggested it – because it’s a stupid idea. 

But for a Republican to acknowledge anger, to the media as represented by Dan Balz, means to be consumed by it, as if conservative thought is an on-off switch with only the bandwidth for one message. 

And John Kerry said Republicans were bad with nuance…

That’s the kind of politician Pawlenty has been up to now. The question is whether, at a time of turmoil within the Republican Party and with a need to raise his own profile, he can prepare himself for a possible presidential campaign without sacrificing the best qualities that brought him to this point in his career.

Dan Balz probably doesn’t realize it – but he’s showing Pawlenty’s best qualities for the job.  He’s just still looking at it from Joe Scarborough’s perspective.

And that’s always a mistake.

…about 60 Minutes’ fraudulent “Texas Air National Guard Memos” story from 2004″…

…I don’t mean to be anthrocentric.