From Luke, one of history’s original bloggers:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ^[a] the Lord.

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

May you and yours have a happy and blessed Christmas!

A while ago, codified all of the various Berg’s Laws in one place.  These laws – an encyclopedic survey of several small but fairly universal truths – include perhaps one of my most trenchant observations, captured for posterity as Berg’s Seventh Law:

Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection – When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting.

Critics have misguidedly assailed this law; “you’re basically saying you’re rubber and we’re glue”, which may sound satisfying on a superficial level, it ignores the fact that the Seventh Law is entirely true.

For example – liberals constantly tell conservatives they’ve “gotten too extreme” for the American people.  This is at a time when the American people are rejecting Obama’s far-left overreach in droves, even to the point of the once-unthinkable; conservatives organizing and going to demonstrations. 

In the meantime, some Democrats – the ones that have to live in the real world outside the Beltway – are starting to get nervous.

This might be the only time you ever see me call  Chicago mayor Richard Daley a moderate.  He’s got an op-ed in the WaPo:

The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party — my lifelong political home — has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.

Rep. Griffith’s decision makes him the fifth centrist Democrat to either switch parties or announce plans to retire rather than stand for reelection in 2010. These announcements are a sharp reversal from the progress the Democratic Party made starting in 2006 and continuing in 2008, when it reestablished itself as the nation’s majority party for the first time in more than a decade.

That success happened for one major reason: Democrats made inroads in geographies and constituencies that had trended Republican since the 1960s. In these two elections, a majority of independents and a sizable number of moderate Republicans joined the traditional Democratic base to sweep Democrats to commanding majorities in Congress and to bring Barack Obama to the White House.

Daley is leaving out a few things, of course; Obama and the Dems made those “inroads” against the legacy of a deeply unpopular outgoing Administration, with the full complicity of a media that made a rigid agenda point of showing Obama as a moderate, to the point of actively stifling any discussion of his far-left past, associations or record.  I think the left accepts that as a given, by now.

But wait! (I’ve added some emphasis):

This call was answered not just by voters but by a surge of smart, talented candidates who came forward to run and win under the Democratic banner in districts dominated by Republicans for a generation. These centrists swelled the party’s ranks in Congress and contributed to Obama’s victories in states such as Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and other Republican bastions.

But now they face a grim political fate. On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with a party that seems to be advancing an agenda far to the left of most voters.

The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

Or more fun!

In particular, I love Daley’s probably-offhanded admission – that the left wing smear machine actually is as venal, smug and divisive as they’ve always alleged hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity and the Northern Alliance – whose messages are actually relatively closer to the center of American politics – to be.

Witness the losses in New Jersey and Virginia in this year’s off-year elections. In those gubernatorial contests, the margin of victory was provided to Republicans by independents — many of whom had voted for Obama. Just one year later, they had crossed back to the Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.

Witness the drumbeat of ominous poll results. Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 49 percent overall and is even lower — 41 percent — among independents. On the question of which party is best suited to manage the economy, there has been a 30-point swing toward Republicans since November 2008, according to Ipsos. Gallup’s generic congressional ballot shows Republicans leading Democrats. There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers. They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.

The Mayor still knows his audience:

Despite this raft of bad news, Democrats are not doomed to return to the wilderness. The question is whether the party is prepared to listen carefully to what the American public is saying. Voters are not re-embracing conservative ideology, nor are they falling back in love with the Republican brand. If anything, the Democrats’ salvation may lie in the fact that Republicans seem even more hell-bent on allowing their radical wing to drag the party away from the center.

Of course, the biggest second-tier danger facing the Democrats is believing their own talking points about the GOP and conservatism; just because you relentlessly intone that everything to the right of Olympia Snowe is “extreme” doesn’t make it so. 

The real conservative case – limited government, individual and economic liberty, security, family – is the American mainstream.  And when Republicans act like conservatives rather than beltway lobbyists-in-training, it shows at the polls. 

Read Daley’s entire op-ed.

I helped my neighbor put up his nativity scene on his lawn the other day.

In it, Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the three kings and a couple of Roman soldiers are pelting a scrawny, smug-looking, nerdy guy in a dishdasha with rocks and garbage.  The nerdy guy has a little callout balloon with an arrow (made out of mylar and wire) saying “Ooh, don’t hurt me, I’m an atheist douchebag wuss”.

When my neighbor put up the display, I looked at him for a moment, mildly dumbfounded. 

“What?” he asked, handing me a can of Miller.

“Well, nothing – and thanks for the beer!  But…do you honestly think that this –  mocking atheists – is the real spirit of the season?”

“Well, sure!  What else is faith for?”

“Um…well, focus on the eternal, as well as on the best that our Christian tradition asks of us?”

“Well, sure”, he said with at tone that really meant “Duuuuh”.  “But mocking atheists is part of it, too!  It’s a vital part, in fact!”

“Where on earth did you learn that?”

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, toward Bud Ismir’s house.  Ismir, a Moslem, had put up his own scene; a group of children, animated by the spirit of Mohammed, whacking at a figure labeled in Arabic (with helpful English subtitles) “atheist” who was trussed up like a turkey in a net bag dangling from a tree, like a sort of organic pinata.

“Er…wow”, I said, cracking the beer.   “That doesn’t even make cultural sense”.

“Well, you’ll love what the Rubensteins put up for Chanukkah”, he said, pointing over to our other neighbor had erected the previous day; a huge, aluminum and plywood Dreidel, powered by an electric motor, spinning randomly, coming occasionally to a stop as a light inside illuminated the Hebrew/English messages on the sides; one read “Atheists!  Go Straight To Hell!  Losers!”

“Um…” I started – and then gave up.  I took a long drag off the beer, and submitted to the spirit of the season, dabbing a little bit of splashed “frankinsense” onto the shoulder of the cringing atheist figure.

Tis the season!

——–

On the one hand, the Illinois state capitol would seem to have a much more sensible approach to holiday decorations than many city, county and state governments; they allow displays from all faiths to put up displays in the Capitol rotunda.  Christian, Moslem, Jewish, or what-have-you. 

Including the atheists.  And that’s where the story begins:

A conservative activist and Illinois comptroller candidate was escorted from the Illinois State Capitol building Wednesday when he tried to remove a sign put up by an atheist group.

William J. Kelly announced Tuesday that he planned to take down the sign put up by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and on Wednesday, he tried to make good on his plan.

But Kelly said when he turned the sign around so it was face down, state Capitol police were quick to escort him away.

Was Kelly right to flip the sign over?  Maybe not.  First Amendment, free speech, yadda yadda yadda.

But let’s not dismiss him entirely:

The sign reads: “At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

So in a display intended to celebrate the spirit of the season, what do the “atheists” do?  Put up a sign whose sole purpose is to piss in other peoples’ Wheaties. 

“I don’t think the State of Illinois has any business denigrating or mocking any religion,” Kelly said, “and I think that’s what the verbiage on the sign was doing.”

And so while Kelly’s methods may have been wrong, his motivations – in a purely ecumenical sense – were absolutely correct.  If – as Establishment-Clausers constantly remind us – the government has no business promoting religion, then isn’t disparaging the beliefs of others even less appropriate a use of public space?

As to Kelly’s claims that the sign mocks religion, foundation co-President Dan Barker said: “He’s kind of right, because the last couple of sentences do criticize religion, and of course, the beginning is a celebration of the winter solstice. But that kind of speech is protected as well – speech that is critical and speech that is supportive.”

The obvious response is to found a “religion” – in my case, a denomination of a religion, since I’m not giving up Christianity anytime soon – part of whose liturgy is to mock the “Freedom From Religion Foundation” as a bunch of self-indulgent, intellectually-indolent, solipsistic jagoffs.

And apply for permits to display signs explaining why.

Tis the season!

We’ve had a few MOB blogs leave Minnesota.  As long as they carry on blogging, I don’t think any of us have a problem with that.

Bear Creek Ledger was always an unrepentant Christian conservative blog when they were here; now that they’ve moved to Tennessee, they’re no less trenchant.  Here, they assail the leftism-of-convenience of way too much of American Catholicism:

Funny how NOW it’s acceptable to use Christian religious symbolism.

From the WaPo – Baby Jesus, poster child for the 2010 Census?

The poster was based on a story in Luke’s gospel that says Joseph and pregnant Mary journeyed from Galilee to Bethlehem to take part in a census decreed by Roman Emperor Augustus. There is no other record of that particular census ever taking place, but the story explains why Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem, the city of David.

The poster was created by the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (not by the Census Bureau), which sent it to more than 7,000 churches to inform Hispanics about the census and encourage them to participate, regardless of their legal status. Some find it comforting.

I’m sure the Catholic Church will go whole hog for this campaign since they’re nothing more than whores for illegal aliens, especially those who come from any Latin country. The Catholic Church and the Vatican has bought into ’social justice’ and wealth transfers.

Bear Creek Ledger – conservatism, unfiltered.

So click in and and support your local MOB blog – even if they’re not local.

 …who the good guy and who the villains are in this story:

A robbery victim overpowered one of four attackers, took her gun and fatally shot her while the other three momentarily left to get food late Tuesday in the South Side’s Bronzeville neighborhood, according to sources.

A woman was found shot dead in an alley behind the 4700 block of South King Drive.

A robbery victim overpowered one of four attackers, took her gun and fatally shot her while the other three momentarily left to get food late Tuesday in the South Side’s Bronzeville neighborhood, according to sources.

The woman was found with multiple gunshot wounds about 11:15 p.m. in an alley behind 4708 S. King Dr., police said.

The four robbers had a gun?  Whew.  Good thing that the City Of Chicago bans handguns in the hands of the law-abiding.  No telling how bad this crime might have been.

The robbery victim was inside a four-door Ford Escort with four suspects inside, including the woman who was killed, according to a law enforcement source.

The woman was told to “guard” the victim while the other three left the car to go get food. While they were gone, the man overpowered the woman, took her gun and shot her with it, and fled the scene on foot, according to the source.

While taking a human life, even in self-defense, is usually a harrowing experience that deeply scars the intended victim, you have to be alive to feel remorse.  And so for what it’s worth, I salute the victim-turned-survivor in this case.

Glenn and Holmes [two Chicago Transit workers] were at a restaurant near the scene when they saw two men –allegedly two of the other robbers– come in the restaurant to use an ATM machine, according to Glenn.

When Glenn and Holmes went back to their truck, they heard shots fired. The shooter then emerged from the alley where the shooting happened and said to Glenn and Holmes, “Call the police; four guys just robbed me.” The shooter was hysterical, Glenn said:

It’s worth noting exactly what a bunch of helpless babe-in-the-woods victims we’re talking about here:

About three hours before the woman was shot or about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, a similar Escort been reported in the area as a “suspicious auto” with four suspects inside who were driving around “yelling at people about how they were going to rob them,” according to the source.

This being Chicago, of course, “self-defense” is no guarantee.  According to Chicago’s integrity-sotted government, the law-abiding citizen (as opposed to City Councilcritters in more ways than one) isn’t supposed to need to defend themselves.

It has not been learned whether the man who was robbed will face any charges.

Just a reminder:  we’re under three months away from arguments in McDowell Vs. Chicago.

It can’t come soon enough.

This is actually a political post.  But you gotta be just a little patient.

Back in my senior year at college, I was sitting in the Philosophy “department” (my college had one philosophy prof; I was waiting for him in his office), reading one of the academic philosophy administration’s trade mags (sorta like Variety or Radio and Records, only advertising job trends for post-structuralists and help wanted ads for Nietscheans).  And I happened upon an article that explored a trend (or “trend”) of people applying to medical school with Bachelors’ in Philosophy (as well as, y’know, degrees in Chemistry and/or Biology, to boot).  The piece touched heavily on the worth of, and need for, doctors who could see beyond the numbers in the test results (as important as they are) to the larger values and ethics of the field.

And in twenty-odd years of dealing with doctors (mostly pediatricians), I’ve seen there’s some merit to this; while medicine is at its core a scientific field, most of them still have to not only deal with people, but with people who are frequently under immense stress, undergoing some of the most miserable traumas in their lives.  The best doctors do it very well; the worst are terrible.

The  Minnpost last week had a post on the subject:

Do you have the personality to be successful in medical school?

A recent study, co-authored by a University of Minnesota psychology professor, has found that certain personality traits may be a better predictor of success in medical school than MCAT scores — particularly during the latter years, when students are out interacting with real patients.

As medical students become “more involved with patients and applied work, personality becomes more and more relevant and predictive” of how well they do in their coursework, said Deniz Ones, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota and one of the co-authors of the study. I talked with her about the study on Thursday.

In other words, the real predictors of success in medicine are not the grades a student gets in high school, college and med school, or the half-decade of test scores leading up to medical school. 

It’s the personality.

The study, which was published in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, looked at five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness), each with six different sub-traits.

The one trait that remained consistently important throughout the seven years of medical training was conscientiousness (competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation), said Ones.

“This is the dimension that is particularly found in education achievement because it’s related to effort and hard work,” she said. “It’s been shown to be related to college performance in other graduate settings as well.”

In medical school, however, conscientiousness became doubly important, said Ones, because attention and diligence is not only essential for good study habits, but also for diagnosing and treating patients.

But there’s a surprise; extroversion is the other apparently-dispositive trait for predicting success.

But another personality trait that showed up among successful medical students did surprise Ones and her colleagues: extroversion (warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, positive emotions).

“At the beginning of medical school, this trait was actually negatively related to performance,” said Ones. After all, extroverted students are more likely to spend their time socializing rather than hitting the medical texts.

“But over time, if they managed to hang on, this liability became an asset,” said Ones. “This is the dimension that allows them to talk to patients, to have an interest in them and care about them.”

Of course, we’ve all run into doctors who lacked any human-interaction skills whatsoever.  I’m willing to bet that the resident who presided over the early labor before my daughter’s birth, a dour Hindi woman with the people skills of the west end of an eastbound lawn mower, got really good grades in high school, college and med school.

“Most of education is geared toward the acquisition of knowledge and skills. That’s what MCAT assesses,” she said. That’s OK, she says, but, as this study and other research shows, how smart someone is often fails to predict how successful they’ll be at a specific profession — particularly one like medicine, which requires such strong people skills.

Of course, it goes well beyond doctors.

I read this study, and I’m reminded of the concentrated snootiness that the left – the “party of the people” – focuses on politicans who, for whatever reason, did things with their early lives other than playing the paper chase.  Sarah Palin’s an obvious example – and too current, really.  A much better one – Reagan.  Reagan was an adequate high school student, went to a very obscure college (Eureka), got further adequate grades…

…and pretty much ended his academic career. 

During Reagan’s political career, some razzed him for not having had a more distinguished academic career – as if he’d have done a better job of reviving the economy, restoring America’s mojo and peacefully toppling the Soviet Union if he’d started his adult life as an insufferable Ivy Leaguer.

Indeed – as the survey of medical students shows – he’s have likely not done nearly as well.

Think about it; the people who get into either medical school or the Ivy League based purely on their high school grades (let’s leave out legacy admissions for now) did so because they were among that thin film of high schoolers who were motivated from Junior High onward to do one thing; get grades.  Not develop social skills; not diversify their personalities; not develop all the soft skills that go along with having to deal with people and navigate real life.

What do you get with a doctor or a politician whose highest pre-adult achievement was getting straight A’s, thereby getting into top-ranked schools?  Someone whose entire formative experience is focused on the academic skills – reading, regurgitating facts on command, kissing ass – and who may or may not have the faintest interest in or empathy for you, the patient/voter.

And someone who may have put grades, if not in the back seat, at least in the shotgun position? 

Well, the article above explains the results with doctors.

So do you think things are different for everyone else in the real world?  Say, with the leader of the free world?

Nathan McLaughlin is the mayor of Clarissa, Minnesota.  And that job keeps him busy enough that America’s Small City Mayor is updated on a relatively leisurely basis.

But it’s good stuff.  McLaughlin brings a fairly keen analytical eye to covering his turf – Clarissa is between Eagle Bend and Browerville [1], up in Minnesota’s reddish-purple hinterland, where Michele Bachmann country starts to dissolve into Collin Peterson country. 

I liked this piece: “Small City Economic Overview and the Policy Bubble“.  Excerpt:

SCSU Scholars economist, King Banaian, shows in a recent study (Slowing Layoffs & Fewer Hires) that while there are fewer layoffs than in previous quarters.  The acceleration in hiring for new jobs just isn’t registering. 

In my conversation with local employers and employees this seems to be the case.  An abundance of caution is being taken to figure out a true direction in our economy.  

Accordingly, one executive, representing our areas largest employer referred to the numerous changes that might be occurring at our state and federal levels. (i.e. banking, health, taxes)  He told me their company just cannot make investments or decisions on a large scale until the legislative actions are brought to a definitive conclusion.

Many of you might remember a post on The Policy Bubble (March 2008).  I had warned about this exact circumstance.  What our free market needs is political certainty on the levels of taxation, regulation, and reform.  Right now business cannot resume until elected representatives in Washington & St. Paul get out of the way.

In a sense, this is how more politicians should blog; give the people coherent analysis, and show why it is you should be in office.

In your wanderings around and about the MOB, make sure you check out America’s Small City Mayor.

[1] Or, to give you a helpful description, it’s about 75 miles northwest of Saint Cloud.

But there they were, the United States Senate, at 1 a.m. Monday, rushing to vote in the middle of a snowstorm to close debate on the most important piece of legislation of our time — the nationalization of the U.S. health care system.

It was 28 years ago this week that Romuald Spasowki, the Polish ambassador to the United States, defected to the United States, kicking off a chain of events that forever underscored what America should be all about.For the previous year, democracy-loving Poles had given communism its biggest internal challenge ever.

The Solidarity trade union movement, led by Lech Wałęsa, had started by paralyzing the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk; the strikes spread nationwide; it was becoming an untenable challenge to the Communists.

Solidarity Congress at the Gdansk Shipyard

The movement was snowballing, paralyzing much of Poland’s industry:

Riot at the Nowy Huta Steelworks

On December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law, breaking up Solidarity strikes by force and arresting Wałęsa and many of his followers.

Jaruzelski announcing martial law on Polish TV

Jaruzelski acted decisively – siccing the ZOMO riot police (who were to 1981 Poland what Noriega’s “Dignity Battalions” were to Panama in 1989 and the basiji are to Iran today) on demonstrators around the country, attacking them with clubs, dogs, water cannon and worse.

Staring south at a northbound wall of thugs; ZOMO riot police.

While a case can be made that Jaruzelski was acting to prevent a Soviet invasion – like the one that had crushed a similar flowering of pro-liberty agitation in Czechoslovakia only 13 years earlier, or in Budapest and Gdansk just 12 years before that – there was no mistaking it on the Polish street; ZOMO’s boot was on their neck.

Ambassador Spasowski had been a communist his entire adult life – but he was also a Polish patriot; his family had fought in the Polish resistance during World War II; his father had died in Gestapo custody.

And his communism had been eroding over the years.  Like all good communists, he’d started out as an atheist.  But his wife, Wanda Spasowska, had gradually won him over to Poland’s majority faith, Catholicism.  And the elevation of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II was the last nail in the coffin of his faith in Communism.

And in December of 1981 Spasowski saw what was happening in Poland…

…and he couldn’t take anymore.  On December 20, he called the State Department, and expressed his desire to defect to the United States.

And it was 29 years ago at about this moment that Ronald Reagan hosted Ambassador Spasowski and Madame Spasowska to the White House.

Madame Spasowska, President Reagan, Ambassador Spasowski

Let me re-emphasize that: Ronald Reagan welcomed the highest-ranking defector in the history of Communism to the very seat of American power.  He took a source of immense, caustic embarassment to Warsaw’s puppet regime (who held a drumhead “trial” for Ambassador Spasowki and sentenced him to death in absentia in the coming weeks) and their gangster overlords in Moscow, and made him not just a refugee, but a highly-honored guest of the American people.  He gave them, in essence, the key to the nation – a ringing endorsement of Solidarnosc, of the Polish freedom fighters, and of the fight for liberty in a dismal land that wanted, and deserved, better.

———-

And then he did it one better.  The next day, December 23 1981, he took the traditional Christmas speech to the nation – traditionally a conciliatory, warm, fuzzy affair – and turned it into a broadside of rhetorical grapeshot onto the packed decks of communist boarders.  I will add the odd bit of emphasis:

As I speak to you tonight, the fate of a proud and ancient nation hangs in the balance. For a thousand years, Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.

The men who rule them and their totalitarian allies fear the very freedom that the Polish people cherish. They have answered the stirrings of liberty with brute force, killings, mass arrests, and the setting up of concentration camps. Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders are imprisoned, their fate unknown. Factories, mines, universities, and homes have been assaulted.

The Polish Government has trampled underfoot solemn commitments to the UN Charter and the Helsinki accords. It has even broken the Gdansk agreement of August 1980, by which the Polish Government recognized the basic right of its people to form free trade unions and to strike.

Compare this to Obama’s initial response to the demonstrations in Iran.  If you can.

Reagan didn’t limit things; he went all-in:

The target of this depression [repression] is the Solidarity Movement, but in attacking Solidarity its enemies attack an entire people. Ten million of Poland’s 36 million citizens are members of Solidarity. Taken together with their families, they account for the overwhelming majority of the Polish nation. By persecuting Solidarity the Polish Government wages war against its own people.

I urge the Polish Government and its allies to consider the consequences of their actions. How can they possibly justify using naked force to crush a people who ask for nothing more than the right to lead their own lives in freedom and dignity? Brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics.

And Reagan wasn’t just “expressing concern” or “sending a message”, either:

I want emphatically to state tonight that if the outrages in Poland do not cease, we cannot and will not conduct “business as usual” with the perpetrators and those who aid and abet them. Make no mistake, their crime (!!!) will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection.

We have been measured and deliberate in our reaction to the tragic events in Poland. We have not acted in haste, and the steps I will outline tonight and others we may take in the days ahead are firm, just, and reasonable.

No, not just words.  There was a plan – one that would directly separate the people from their oppressors:

In order to aid the suffering Polish people during this critical period, we will continue the shipment of food through private humanitarian channels, but only so long as we know that the Polish people themselves receive the food. The neighboring country of Austria has opened her doors to refugees from Poland. I have therefore directed that American assistance, including supplies of basic foodstuffs, be offered to aid the Austrians in providing for these refugees.

But to underscore our fundamental opposition to the repressive actions taken by the Polish Government against its own people, the administration has suspended all government-sponsored shipments of agricultural and dairy products to the Polish Government…We have halted the renewal of the Export-Import Bank’s line of export credit insurance to the Polish Government. We will suspend Polish civil aviation privileges in the United States. We are suspending the right of Poland’s fishing fleet to operate in American waters. And we’re proposing to our allies the further restriction of high technology exports to Poland.

Knowing the Poles weren’t just a proud people – who isnt? – but a people that had put it all on the line for liberty before.  Reagan invoked our shared history…:

When 19th century Polish patriots rose against foreign oppressors, their rallying cry was, “For our freedom and yours.” Well, that motto still rings true in our time. There is a spirit of solidarity abroad in the world tonight that no physical force can crush. It crosses national boundaries and enters into the hearts of men and women everywhere. In factories, farms, and schools, in cities and towns around the globe, we the people of the Free World stand as one with our Polish brothers and sisters. Their cause is ours, and our prayers and hopes go out to them this Christmas.

…tying the American and Polish people together rhetorically as well as through his actions.

Can you imagine the current Administration doing that?  Ever?

And finally – something that I think about every Christmas, especially in times like these:

Yesterday, I met in this very room with Romuald Spasowski, the distinguished former Polish Ambassador who has sought asylum in our country in protest of the suppression of his native land. He told me that one of the ways the Polish people have demonstrated their solidarity in the face of martial law is by placing lighted candles in their windows to show that the light of liberty still glows in their hearts.

Ambassador Spasowski requested that on Christmas Eve a lighted candle will burn in the White House window as a small but certain beacon of our solidarity with the Polish people. I urge all of you to do the same tomorrow night, on Christmas Eve, as a personal statement of your commitment to the steps we’re taking to support the brave people of Poland in their time of troubles.

And so Reagan lit a candle.  And across America, so did millions more, in America’s Polish hubs in Chicago and Milwaukee of course, but in millions of homes that couldn’t pronounce “Czestoszowa” but who could tell good from evil.  And though the puppet regime in Warsaw and their masters in Moscow tried to stifle the story, the word got through to millions of Poles in the street, and thousands in jail; the American President, and the people he leads, are with you.

It would be seven years before Reagan could issue his challenge to Gorbachev to “tear down the wall”; it would be nine years before the Berlin Wall finally fell.  But one could make a strong case that the first crack appeared 28 years ago tonight, when a brave man without a country (for a few years, anyway; the Polish parliament reinstated the Spasowski’s citizenship in 1994) met with a visionary, and sent a simple message; “freedom lives, and we support it”.

It was a simple message, but one that turned out to be overwhelmingly successful:  in 1980, the world had just 56 democracies.  In 1990, the total rose to 76; by 1994, the number reached 114 – a 100% jump in fourteen years.

The Polish National Anthem (“Mazurek Dabrowskiego“), written by Poles who like Ambassador Spasowka were also in exile (in about 1800, with Bonaparte’s Polish Legion), goes:

Jeszcze Polska nie umarła,
Kiedy my żyjemy
Co nam obca moc wydarła,
Szablą odbijemy.

(Poland has not perished yet
So long as we still live
That which alien force has seized
We at sabrepoint shall retrieve)

It was 28 years ago tonight that the sabre came out – rhetorically speaking.  And the whole world is better off for it today.

Vegetarians choose not to eat meat for a variety of reasons. Some cite the lower fat and cholesterol and higher fiber on their plates. Others for more emotional reasons: they don’t want to eat anything that smiles back at them. Hypothetically at least.

I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham.

George Clooney’s political bent certainly qualifies him as a pig, but I hardly think he looks like one.  Or vice versa.

If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make ’em smell so good when they’re cookin’?

Now scientists (possibly those furlowed in the recent Global Warming controversy) are telling us that vegetables should be off the table too.

we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot.

Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way.

It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

Sorry, what? I couldn’t hear you, I was trying to bite off a chunk of my laptop battery. I think I chipped a tooth.

When plant biologists speak of their subjects, they use active verbs and vivid images. Plants “forage” for resources like light and soil nutrients and “anticipate” rough spots and opportunities. By analyzing the ratio of red light and far red light falling on their leaves, for example, they can sense the presence of other chlorophyllated competitors nearby and try to grow the other way. Their roots ride the underground “rhizosphere” and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade.

Maybe so, but can they dance?

Plants can scream though. Sort of.

Some of the compounds that plants generate in response to insect mastication [that means chewing gutter-huggers-JR] — their feedback, you might say — are volatile chemicals that serve as cries for help. Such airborne alarm calls have been shown to attract both large predatory insects like dragon flies, which delight in caterpillar meat, and tiny parasitic insects, which can infect a caterpillar and destroy it from within.

So dragon flies can eat delicious caterpillar meat but I can’t?

It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive.

If that’s not a bumper sticker yet, it should be.

Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.

Well then, why didn’t the Democrats include plants in the health care bill? Don’t they care?

So as you sit down to your bountiful (hopefully) table later this week, have compassion. Remember: you can’t eat animals; you can’t eat plants. Merry Christmas!

There was a time when blogging was a little like Twittering is today; indeed, in the days before Twitter, many blogs were a medium for people to publish quick jottings to an audience.

Some of us shifted to the longer and longer form post over time (MITCH’S AUDIENCE: “No kidding?”); others stayed with the original idea.

Some still do.  Alan Anderson has been doing “For Personal Responsibility” for the past four years; a long series of piquant, focused personal jottings.

Wednesday;

President Lyndon Johnson’s administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama’s will be known for his War on Prosperity.

I’m speaking, of course, about Obama’s effort to engineer a massive redistribution of wealth in America, using all the coercive powers of government now under Democrat control.

Make no mistake about it: Obama does not believe in individual upward mobility. He would penalize it, tax it, regulate it, inveigh against it, and disincentivize it.

Economical.  To the point.  No messing around.

“For Personal Responsibility” is like a political commonplace book for someone who thinks about the subject a lot.  And since I agree with Mr. Anderson, near as I can tell, on most everything, that’s a very good thing.

Stop by, say “hi”, and support your local MOB bloggers.  Please.

Lying in bed, writing a post for this afternoon, listening to the KQ morning show…

…and they play this (the studio version, anyway):

I didn’t know they had anything from Darkness other than “Badlands”. 

But hey, wotta way to start the day.

I know this story’s been making the rounds, but I had to get in on it; a Brit Anglican priest is urging the poor to shoplift:

‘My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,’ [Father Tim Jones] told his stunned congregation at St Lawrence and St Hilda in York.

‘I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.

That’s right.  There’s nuance!  More later.

Father Jones does have scruples, though:

‘I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

In other words – “pass a tax on the rest of society without bothering to go through the government”.

It’s the ultimate manifestation of “hope and change”; it’s Chicago politics taken to the streets.  Er, aisles.

‘I would ask them not to take any more than they need. I offer the advice with a heavy heart. Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift.

Oh, heavens no.  It’s a simplistic call to for people to shoplift wrapped in a tortilla of demented pseudo-religion.

‘The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are.

Depends on what the definition of the word “we” is.

‘Rather, this is a call for our society no longer to treat its most vulnerable people with indifference and contempt.

‘When people are released from prison, or find themselves suddenly without work or family support, then to leave them for weeks with inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly.

Er, yeah.  Perhaps the Anglican Church could, y’know, help people?

“Rock the Vote” is urging supporters of socialized, government healthcare rationing to go all Lysistrata on their purported pro-free-market paramours:

Just when every tactic in the book had been seemingly exhausted in the health care debate, Rock the Vote comes along with a new one: if you want health care reform, don’t sleep with anyone who opposes it until his or her mind is changed. 

The youth advocacy group is pushing the campaign in a Web video and pledge on its Web site, which asks supporters to “hold out” for health care. 

The campaign isn’t just absurd; it’s an example of incredibly poor market research.  Given that most lefties, especially the young ones, regard politics as their religion, “not being a fellow statist” is often as not a showstopper for young relationships; a young Barbara Boxer supporter is staggeringly unlikely to be dating someone with an independent streatk anywhere in his/her mind.

But I have a better idea:   People who support the free market?  You withhold sex from people who support Obamacare!  Because liberals crave instant gratification and lack conservatives’ calm and patience, they’ll cave in long before you do. 

Oh, yes – and American Left?  Stay classy.  Really:

The subtlety of the online pledge, though, is completely undone by the video, which employs zero rhetorical devices, except for a couple of bleeps, to get its message bluntly across. 

“We pledge ourselves to the health and liberty of young Americans and to government for the people … and to never f—ing you if you are against us,” the team of actors in the video says. 

“We will vote against you, work against you, and once again, just in case you forgot, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever f— you.” .

Fear not, commercial starlets (a couple of flavor-of-the-month actors from some current flash-in-the-pan series); pretty soon, you’ll discover your agents and management have taken care of that for you.  And then you’ll be doing the same thing on one casting couch or another until your plastic surgery gives out, and you won’t give a Flaming Pelosi what the casting agent’s take on healthcare will be.

(And if I were a young person, I’d be pissed that the Left figured I was such a slave to my desires that that would work on me anyway).

This year, for the Fourth Annual Shootie Awards – the annual award for the worst and (occasionally) best in Twin Cities blogging, I’m doing something different.

In addition to my own awards, I’ll be doing a Reader Participation award.  Sort of like Rolling Stone magazine’s annual “Best Of” edition, which has always been divided into “Readers” and “Critics” polls, I’ll be doing “Readers” and “Mitch/Roosh/Doug” awards this year.

So if you have nominations for best/worst Twin Cities blogging moments since last January 1, drop ’em in this comment section between now and December 28.

The Shooties – a tradition unlike many others!

An ambulance crew brings in a shooting victim; one shot to the chest, one to the head.  There was a lot of blood loss from the chest wound, and the victim is in immense cardiopulmonary distress.

The head wound missed the medulla, at the brain stem, the part that controls the heart and breathing and the rest of the body’s automatic functions (and, for most of the Minnesota Progressive Project staff, their writing as well) – so the victim didn’t die instantly.  But the victim seems to be non-responsive; there are indications his brain functions are badly damaged; he may be in a coma, or worse.

So the doctors give up and administer a massive overdose of morphine to kill the patient, because it’s all over anyway and why drag it on?

Well, no.  They don’t. They stabilize the patient as best they can.  They check further to see if the brain is really shut down; if it’s not, they do what they can to restore function.

When in doubt, they err on the side of saving lives [1].

Now, I don’t write a lot about abortion.  I’m opposed to it, of course; I’m personally pro-life.  I find most of the arguments in favor of “choice” to be self-indulgent and childish.  I’m going to skip most of them – it’s nothing I haven’t written about in some depth, of course.

With that in mind, the argument about the “viability” – the idea that a fetus isn’t really all that terribly human until it’s “viable”, or capable of living on its own – is perhaps less stupid than most.  It’s wrong, of course; after three kids, I can say with authority that a “fetus” isn’t “viable” until it can get a job and pay its own rent.

More seriously?  I believe that since a fertilized egg, left to its own devices (no medical intervention for or against its existence – just like in our great-great-grandparents’ time) will gestate for nine months 75% of the time, and those who get that far will be born alive two out of three times (those stats are from primitive cultures like 1890-era rural Minnesota), it’s fairly clear that whatever the physics and physiology and metaphysics behind the process, the whole thing is intended to create living, breathing human beings.  Beyond that?  I think it’s fairly clear that since preemies have been successfully brought along to fairly normal lives as early as 22 weeks into gestation, that the idea that a “fetus” isn’t “human” until a 40-week fetus’ umbilical is cut is a self-indulgent, illogical absurdity.

None of the above, by the way, touches on spirituality at any level.  It’s nothing but logic, so far.

But I’m a Christian.  I believe  that every person (except Ryan Seacrest) has a soul.

“When?”

We don’t know.

Souls are not measurable.  There’s no place in human physiology that’s been identified as a “soul fill valve”, leading to a “soul tank” where the ephemeral concept is kept.  It’s not like a brain wave, much less synonymous with it, and if it were, the gunshot victim in the example above would be out of luck.  Not everyone agrees that there is such a thing; atheists all bet the “under” on Pascal’s Wager.    No matter – if you assume there is no soul, and are motivated by anything other than naked self-interest, it actually makes the question harder to resolve.  We’ll come back to that.

So the question – part of it, anyway – is “when does a fetus get a soul?”

Dog Gone at Penigma writes a very long treatise that says, essentially,  we don’t know because spirutual authorities have never agreed on the subject:

I have read widely on the subject of our human soul and spirituality, and listened to many different voices pontificating ther dogma on the subject in the course of satisfying my own curiosity…This breadth of recognition might suggest some sort of consensus, some unanimity of understanding, a clarity and agreement on definition, right?

Of course, not.  Ecclesiastical bodies have fought long, bloody wars over the subject; when two of the great Christian denominations have been split for almost a thousand years over the Nicene Creed and the job description for saints, when Presbyterian congregations fall into epic near-blood-feuds over applause in church, to say nothing of gay marriage, looking for general consensus on the nature of the Soul is hopelessly optimistic.

There is no consensus across history or across the geography of our planet on any single specific aspect of that essence we name souls. We don’t agree on what it is; we don’t agree on when it is inside of us; we don’t agree on the origins. We don’t even fully agree on whether or not the soul is immortal or eternal; some believe that the soul can die, others that it grows as the body grows, with experience. We don’t agree on how, where, and from whom our souls derive. We don’t agree on who or what possesses a soul.

DG goes on to note that even within Christian tradition, the idea of the genesis of the soul has knocked around a bit:

The Christian tradition is contradictory. The roots of early Judaism posited that animals, at least some animals, had souls, as do other religious and spiritual traditions. In Islam, the belief is that the soul enters the body of a fetus in utero after 40 days. Not 90 or 180 days, not 30 minutes, and not at conception; they are quite definite on the 40 day figure. But then, in the Islamic faith, not only humans have souls either. Djinn and angels also have souls in that faith’s traditions. In the Druidic tradition, and in many other traditions (the many irreverent verses of “Give me that old time religion” are playing in my head) so do some trees and other inanimate objects.

Right.  But then, traditional religion from the dawn of time until pretty recently believed all sorts of stuff we find crazy today; insert boilerplate here about burning witches and kosher laws and selling indulgences and human sacrifice and stoning gays (oops; one religion still does that).

Of course, in that era people couldn’t tell with any certainty that the crop they planted in April wouldn’t be eaten to the ground by bugs in July or blown away by a sudden storm in August; people never connected “taking a dump upstream from where you get your drinking water” and the hacking, fever-ridden wave of deaths that would periodically befall the village; in a village where the people had raised vegetables and sheep for uncounted generations, humans were born the same way the animals were; the way nature had left the process.  And it was an ugly process; 1/3 of babies (of the 3/4 that weren’t miscarried earlier) were stillborn or died of complications during delivery, as did 10% of the mothers (with each birth); and that was even before infant mortality set in.

So given the exceedingly crude nature of “science” back when years had three digits and the world’s major religious leaders were half a generation removed from raising keff and goats, especially the understanding of human physiology and development at the time, the question “when exactly does the soul inhabit the body” was purely academic; like “what will I wear on my third date with Scarlett Johannson”, it might be fun to think about, but the practical application is pretty minimal.

But today, the vast majority of “fetuses”, barring pseudomedical interference and, of course, miscarriage, survive until birth and beyond.  Not only that, but as noted above “fetuses” born just past half-term go on to live normal lives – utterly unthinkable even a generation ago (which, if logic rather than politics reigned, would make most non-health-related third-term abortions murder).  We don’t know when life is viable, but the boundaries keep getting pushed back.

The objective boundaries, anyway.

And since, unlike my third date with Scarlett Johannson, the essense of life is actually a valid, testable question these days, the question “when does viable, human life begin” isn’t an academic question.

100 years ago, the gunshot victim in the first paragraph might have been given up for dead without bothering with a trip to a hospital.  Today, science can find out if there really is a brain function in there that can be nursed back into control of the body.  People what would have been give up for dead fifty years ago walk among us today.

And definitions of “when does a human become human” written a thousand years ago by people for whom it was an utterly academic question are no more informative to us today than surgery textbooks from 1700 are to the Mayo today.

Leaving aside the fact that the concept of “the soul” is ephemeral and unmeasurable in any way; even the fairly objective measurement of “when life begins” is, paradoxically, more difficult than ever, since science has made the instrumentation and criteria so much finer than before.

And so the paradox is, if you care about the intangibles that make humans human, the more we know about how life works, the less meaningful the attempts to put an arbitrary, “objective” limit on them.  How do you put a number on something that gets less measurable, the better able to measure it you theoretically are?

Since we don’t know – and, unlike the rabbis of the Old Testament and the druids and popes and mullahs of 1000 years ago, we know what we don’t know – then if you believe that human life has any intangible but real value (call it a “soul” if you want, or “worth as a human life” if you don’t), then the only logical response, as with the gunshot victim above, is to err on the side of life.  If we don’t know life to be absent in an organism that is intended to live, then you assume it – he or she – is alive.

And you can tell Pope Pius II I said so.

[1] Although with Obamacare in place, they’ll have to check with a committee of government accountants and lawyers for medical advice, first.

My neighbor and commenter PeterH has been asking in the comment section why conservatives aren’t out rallying against the proposals to subsidize a possible new Vikings stadium.

There are conservatives who make valid cases against stadium subsidies – my NARN colleague King Banaian has written on the subject on an academic level, to say nothing of blogging – and for it (this’d be Katie Kieffer).

For the record,I oppose on princple most government subsidy of anything – not just billionaires’ businesses, but of extended poverty as well.  But I digress.

Without trying to control for political sympathies, let’s find out what the readers of this blog think:

Next stop in our tour around the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers – 270 Days in Afghanistan, a production by Captain Mark Martin, a Minnesotan whose subject matter should be pretty obvious from the title; it’s a story of a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

The blog started last June – and from the beginning, has been a fascinating look at the life of a typical soldier going off to a modern war; the bureaucracy, the lingo, the mission.

I thought packing my kids for a vacation was a job; Cpt. Martin describes the job of packing up his company for nine months back in the Stone Age:

For those of you who have never been in the United States Armed Forces, and the Army in particular, there are plenty of anachronisms, acronyms, lingo, and generally huge explanations for what can be the simplest of things. I once saw a sign that read, “Ft. Lee, Virginia! Home of USALMC-G4LOGPACCOM!” That was Army-ese for “United States Army Logistics Management College – General Staff 4 Logistics Packaging Command”. These guys are the dudes that come up with how supplies should be routed around the world. Pretty impressive….I’ll give them that. But does their acronym really have to be that convoluted. Seriously?

Anyhoo….fast forward to this particular installment of my fantastic voyage. The Pre-Combat Check/Pre Combat Inspection. You see….the Army doesn’t walk out the door, get into the vehicle, and drive off into the fray. No no no….the Army has Checklists and Inspections! Mostly this is to keep unimaginative people like me from packing irrelevant minutiae. Things such as the latest installment of Homes and Gardens magazine have no place in the Army rucksack! I mean c’mon! There are STANDARDS dude!

So the PCC/PCI has been around for as long as the United States Army has been in business. Way back in the colonial days, Samuel Smith might have shown up with his musket on time and in the right place, but the battlefield was minutes from his house, right? These days we pack truckloads of stuff halfway around the world. Small wonder that we need to check and re-check what we plan on bringing to the fight.

Today was a day for PCCs/PCIs. Loadplans, vehicle setup, rucksack configuration, packing lists, ammo loads, pyrotechnic storage. You get the idea. Anything and everything a soldier would need to close with and destroy the enemy on the friendly highways and byways of Afghanistan. Besides…I have always found that the best way to get soldiers who have never been in combat more comfortable with the idea is to inundate them with preparation. That way, when it come time to actually pull the trigger, it is yet another thing that they have practiced. Soldiering is a dangerous business.

It’s not hard to catch up on the entire history of the blog; Cpt. Martin’s had some other priorities than writing this past seven months, so a few posts go a long way.  But it’s well worth the read.

Stop by, say “hi”, and by all means tell the Captain the MOB thanks him for his service.

As, indeed, I am right now.

You might have heard the radio ads:  the Minneapolis Police Federation has taken out commercials pointing out Minneapolis mayor and DFL gubernatorial candidate R.T. Rybak’s record on crime.

Not so, says Rybak (via MPR-via-MDE):

I have focused like a laser [Note:  I think I’ve found a closet Michael Medved listener! – Ed.] on making Minneapolis a safe place to call home, and we’ve had some great success: in the last three years, we’ve cut violent crime by 39%, violent crime by juveniles is down 47% and murders are at the lowest level in decades. The work of Chief Tim Dolan and officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, combined with that of neighbors across our city, have made Minneapolis safer by almost every measure. These facts are indisputable.

Unfortunately, the Federation’s ad is about politics, not policing.

[Note to Mayor Rybak:  Next time you or some other gun controlbot wants flog another national police chiefs’ association’s endorsement of gun control, I’ll be there to remind you you just said that.  But I digress]

I’ve made a practice of focusing on getting results for the people of Minneapolis and not focusing on predictably misleading ads from the Police Federation. That’s not going to change.

Luke Hellier at MDE notes that while crime has dropped from a very dismal peak three years ago – when Minneapolis was flirting with re-achieving its “Murderapolis” label from the nineties – it still hasn’t dropped to the same level as when he was elected:

Rybak’s First Year As Mayor 2002:

Murder – 31

Rape – 254

Assault – 1184

Most Recent Full Year 2008:

Murder – 39

Rape – 327

Assault – 1977

As with Luke, I’ll direction you to check out the facts yourselves.

Via the print only edition of yesterday’s Strib;  counties, exhibiting government’s typical foresight, overbuilt on jails just as the crime boom peaked and fell:

In the past five years, Minnesota counties spent tens of millions of dollars to add beds to their jail capacity.

But there are now 18,000 fewer arrests than there were at the start of the building boom.

Mr. Pragmatic responds:  Homelessness problem solved!

(Er – hey!  What happened to the homeless problem?  I haven’t read a single story about the homeless since last January!)

I had a lot of discussions last year with conservatives who refused to vote for – indeed, fumed with anger against – Norm Coleman; because of one transgression or another (keeping a campaign promise and voting against ANWR drilling being one example), they called him a “RINO”.  It was palpable balderdash, of course; Coleman was as conservative as a Minnesota Senator ever could be on a wide range of issues, including the ones – I am stressing this much more strongly verbally than you can possible tell through my writing – that should matter to conservatives, things like the budget, the war, American sovereignty.

And above that, remember – perfect is the enemy of good enough.  Coleman wasn’t the perfect conservative – but I hasten to add that Minnesota at this point in history is not going to elect a perfect conservative.  Norm Coleman was the best that we’re going to get out of five million people who also think Amy Klobuchar and Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum and Jim Oberstar are just dreamy.

Elections have consequences.  And in the Obamacare debate, we’re seeing those consequences, lining up at our nation’s head like a Russian-Roulette player’s revolver.

Mr. D at TvM via T  has a gentle reminder for at least 300 “conservatives” who helped put Al Franken in office just as surely as ACORN and MoveOn did:

Congratulations to those “true conservatives” who pulled the lever for Dean Barkley to teach that RINO Norm Coleman a lesson. You really showed ‘em. Congratulations to the Peggy Noonans and Christopher Buckleys of the world, who had every reason to know what the result of their perdify would be. Congratuations to Doug Kmiec, who assured everyone that voting with the Democrats was the best way to preserve life. I hope you enjoy your time as Ambassador to Malta. Maybe you can stay there.

Congratulations to all of you. Elections have consequences. You now get to enjoy the consequences.

And a prediction:

The next big growth industry? Maquiladora hospitals. And remember, you heard it here first.

D makes a good observation; this may be the best thing to happen to the economy of Mexico and Honduras, ever.

Too bad we couldn’t have saved a couple trillion dollars and done it by getting them to overthrow socialism instead.

As I write this, Ed and I are interviewing Rep. Tom Price on what you and I can do to push back against the healthcare bill, which should be coming up to a vote this week, quite likely on Christmas Eve.

You need to call the House at 202.224.3121.  Call Collin Peterson to thank him for being on the right side so far, and ask him to stay on the right side.  Also Represenatives Stupak, Tanner, Baird, Gordon and Moore, all of whom are vulnerable. 

We’re getting close to the “for all the marbles” phase.

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

• 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.  In addition to the usual “week in review” stuff, we’ll be talking Rep. Keith Downey about the Legislature’s Jobs Task Force, what it did (or, if you prefer, didn’t) accomplish, and how we can kickstart Minnesota’s economy..
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And it pains me to say that David Strom and Margaret Martin will be doing the final episode of the David Strom Show from 9-11AM. Sorry to hear that they’re shutting down their show, after seven solid years.  They’ll be continuing a podcast, details of which I’ll no doubt be providing shortly.  Anyway – all the best, David and Margaret!  Don’t be strangers!

(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!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

Mark McKinnon at The Daily Beast indulges in the wonk’s favorite weekend pastime – putting together lists.

This one – the top ten GOP contenders.

He’s got Mitt at the top of the list, followed by Palin and Pawlenty.  Not a bad start.

Moving down the list, though, you get the impression he’s trying to gin up some discussion (and apparently it worked, since I’m linking him…).

4. John Thune

If he would run, John Thune could be the Bob McDonnell of the 2012 GOP field.

In a field as deep with center-right conservatives, John Thune is impressive – but in a field where “center-right” includes Romney, Pawlenty, I see Thune – a freshman Senator, let’s not forget – being far down the crowd.  

5. Mike Huckabee

Put a fork in him. While I agree with McKinnon – the clemency decision on Clemmons, who got a life-plus-life sentence for crimes committed when he wasn’t even of legal age; statistically, it wasnt’ a bad bet, although that’s no comfort for the families of the four cops he allegedly killed.

Much worse, in a just world?  He’s no more fiscally conservative than George W. Bush was.

6. Joe Scarborough

Make it stop.

Next – evidence that McKinnon spends too much time among wonks:

7. Haley Barbour

Don’t laugh. Haley’s as wily a fox as anyone out there prowling the political countryside these days. He’s smart, strategic and has been around the rodeo a very long time. Sure he’s a caricature of the classic Southern politician: old, large, white, honey-lipped, and a former lobbyist to boot. But if voters are really tired of Obama, they’ll be looking for the mirror opposite of the man occupying the Oval Office. And that would clearly be Haley.

Barbour is a highly-qualified candidate; he’s an opposite of Obama in more than just the cosmetics that seem to enthrall McKinnon.  He’s a blazingly capable executive; he’s accomplished things – his record as governor of Mississippi stands next to Romney’s and Pawlenty’s in their states.

But is he the opposite of Obama?  Not in the way voters, especially voters who’ve genuinely soured on Obama or Republicans who want to right the ship, will care about.

8. Newt Gingrich

It will never happen.  Please stop talking about it.

9. Mitch Daniels

Daniels has been an extraordinarily successful and effective governor in Indiana, a state that has been recently more blue than red. A no-nonsense, tell-it-like-is conservative, Daniels cruised to re-election by 18 points last year when Obama was winning the state.

I’d not thought about Daniels much – and I think his name recognition is, if anything, lower than Pawlenty’s (and Governor Pawlenty’s been working hard on raising his, in a way Daniels has not, at least at this point in the campaign, for what that’s worth, which isn’t much).

But here, I think McKinnon’s onto something:

10. Rick Perry

The only real question about Texas Governor Rick Perry is why he hasn’t been on any lists until now. He’s already the longest-serving governor in Texas history and may be headed for his third term next fall. Veteran Texas political observer Paul Burka makes a compelling case for why he should be considered:

1. Unlike Huckabee, Romney, and Palin, he is still in office.
2. He is the longest-serving governor in Texas history.
3. He is governor of the biggest red state that sends the most delegates to the Republican convention.
4. He has the best conservative record of any contender.
5. He has assiduously courted key figures in the Republican establishment.
6. The Murdoch news empire loves him. He is the beneficiary of puff pieces in The Wall Street Journal and softball questions on Fox News.
7. He has an extensive fundraising apparatus in Texas that is capable of raking in enough cash to make the race, and he is now in charge of finance for the Republican Governors Association, giving him access to the GOP’s big national donors.
8. He has not one but two strong messages. The first: Washington is corrupt to the core and out of touch with Main Street. The second: the Texas economic miracle.
9. He was quick to understand the significance of the tea party movement and attended many of the early gatherings.
10. With rare exceptions (such as the HPV vaccine controversy), he almost never deviates from the conservative line.

We can go on from there: he’s got huge cred among the Tea-party (aka “Real American”) crowd, and he’s got two-plus successful terms as governor of a huge state.  He’s a “Tenther”, who exudes just the right tinge of “don’t tread on me” that a big chunk of this country wants (and gets from Sarah Palin), combined providing an undeniable conservative alternative that, with a little work, can convince the center to move right (rather than vice versa – which is what people like Huckabee and Scarborough are all about).

Perry’s moved onto my personal long list over this past month or two.

Beyond that?

Watch List:

• Ron Paul: Where are you? The environment is ripe for a libertarian like Paul to stir the tea party pot in 2012.

When you can have a Rick Perry – who brings most of the “libertarian”, and none of the “loose cannon”, why even mess with Paul?

• Jeb Bush: The first son of George H.W. Bush was supposed to be the 43rd President. He is widely respected by conservatives and it’s unlikely, but not impossible, that he could be the 45th, or 46th. And there’s always his telegenic Hispanic son, George P., who could keep the job in the family as 47.

Let’s give this generation a rest, and maybe give P at shot at it someday.

When the state economy, dragged the the abysmal national economy – got dragged down last year (albeit to a much lesser extent than the rest of the nation, though much much much more than neighboring low-tax, low-“service” North and South Dakota), the local Sorosphere and lefty pundocracy leapt about like poo-flinging monkeys on Red Bull; “It’s Timmy’s recession!  It’s Timmy’s recession!”, they yapped, and there was even evidence that some of them knew what a “recession” was.

So with the news that it wasn’t that bad, and that Minnesota – fresh off Pawlenty’s successful rear-guard action against the DFL’s “Happy To Spend Money Like Crack Whores With Stolen Gold Cards” attempted spending spree last session – is S recovering faster than most of the nation (at least, the parts of the nation that got into trouble  by being high-tax and high “service”in the first place)…:

The state gained 2,000 jobs in November, according to figures released Thursday that also contained a revision of October’s results that showed twice as many jobs were created that month as originally thought.

“Compared to where we have been, this is just really good news. I am not ready to start singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ but it looks like we are headed in the right direction,” said state economist Tom Stinson.

{{crickets}}

Where do you find crickets in December, anyway?