the AFL-CIO Min has declined to endorse a candidate so far:
n a somewhat surprising move, the AFL-CIO opted NOT to endorse a gubernatorial candidate “at this time.’
In recent days, the DFL-endorsed candidate, Margaret Anderson Kelliher, has been picking up the endorsements of individual unions at an impressive rate. But this afternoon, a big one — the AFL-CIO endorsement — got away.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess they’ll come up with one right about August 11.
Speed Gibson has a question that hadn’t occurred to me yet:
A name popped into my head today: Bob Woodward. I wonder if he’s still working. If he’s working, I wonder what he’s working on. I wonder if he’s working on … President Barack Obama, much as he did President George W. Bush, multiple times. Woodward’s “Bush at War” was published in November of 2002, recounting the first few months after the 9/11 attack. So, will there be a Woodward book this fall of 2010 on some aspect of the historic Presidency of Barack Obama?
It’s not like there’s not material:
The problem is, of course, where to start. The Stimulus that didn’t. National socialist health care? The Gulf oil spill? His mess of a foreign policy? The bailouts? Where to start? Maybe it won’t be Woodward, but I have to believe some Obama perspectives will be appearing in time for Christmas.
Well, no. Writing about Obama would be racist.
Science is joining forces to analyze…
Ozzy Osbourne’s genome will be sequenced, in hopes that scientists can figure out how the notoriously self-destructive rocker is still alive.
“Sequencing and analyzing individuals with extreme medical histories provides the greatest potential scientific value,” Nathan Pearson, director of research at Knome, a leading gene-sequencing company, told the U.K. newspaper the Daily Mail.
Although the 61-year-old Osbourne has been sober for eight years, he spent the bulk of his life consuming legendary amounts of alcohol and hard drugs, as well as engaging in other high-risk activities.
Perhaps next “Knome” can analyze the genomes of people who thought Black Sabbath didn’t suck.
Back during Desert Storm, Saturday Night Live – which still had Phil Hartmann, Dennis Miller, Jan Hooks and Dana Carvey, and was hence still funny at the time – parodied one of the military press conferences that were such a staple of the coverage of that war, way back when.
In it, a stoic military officer (played, if I remember correctly, by Kevin Nealon) stood, trying to remain unruffled, as “journalists” asked a series of increasingly absurd questions:
REPORTER: “Tell us, Colonel: what will be the targets, strike times and units involved in any air raids today?”
OFFICER: “Um, I am afraid I can’t, er, discuss that…”
ANOTHER REPORTER: “Colonel, when exactly will the ground attack take place, and where?”
OFFICER: “Um…”
The media’s coverage of Tom Emmer’s gubernatorial campaign reminds me of that skit.
I noticed this bit in Erik Black’s piece in the MinnPost that I covered yesterday (and that Black’s old colleague John Tevlin, in true “Circle The Wagons!” style, also covers today, in nearly identical thoughts if not words):
[Emmer] owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)
I asked yesterday – Emmer “owes” the people “straight talk”, while the DFLers merely get a mild joshing nod?
Still, I’ve heard this from a few people; “If Emmer’s so great, and if he’s going to rebuild government, then where is his master plan on how he’s going to do the whole thing?”
I gotta confess sometimes, I”m curious myself.
But it doesn’t take a political consultant or an especially curious journalist to see that…:
So with that in mind, tell me – what sense would it make for Tom Emmer to release “the master plan” for his administration, two months before there is an alternative to compare it to? All that would do is give the DFL and the media (that is, let’s be honest, largely on the DFL’s side) time to define, frame, and re-spin it, long before the Dems ever have a candidate, much less a “plan” to “scrutinize”. Which I put in scare quotes, since I’m not willing to take it on faith that anyone in the Twin Cities’ establishment media will “scrutinize” the DFL’s “plan” so much as run cover for it; that’ll be, as usual, the job of the conservative alternative media.
What’s Emmer’s plan? I dunno. His rhetoric is certainly building up expectations; if he’s not swinging for the fence, he’s at least aiming for the outfield. He’s be nuts not to, in my humble opinion; this is a year when people want to see results, and are showing everyone who cares how sick they are of arrogant, rapacious, thud-witted goverment and the bills it leaves us.
But is he wrong to sit on that plan until it matters? Even if , horror of horrors, it leaves the state’s chattering classes and the designers of the DFL’s Chanting Points less material for the time being?
I’ll give you my answer when I see Mark Dayton’s plan.
I read this, and wondered for a brief moment if the story didn’t have some garbled copy – if it wasn’t talking about Afghanistan, or southern Mexico, or the Congo or something.
No such luck (I’m adding emphasis):
An area in south-central Arizona that was once a haven for family hiking and off-roading, now has signs warning of drug smugglers and human traffickers.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu says that his department no longer has control over parts of his county.
At a recent press conference, Sheriff Babeu said, “We are outgunned, we are out manned and we don’t have the resources here locally to fight this.”
It is, in effect, an insurgency on American soil, on behalf of a foreign power (albeit not a soverign government – at least, not directly):
Last month, Pinal County Deputy Sheriff Louie Puroll was ambushed and shot as he tracked six drug smugglers. Sheriff Babeu said the ambush mirrored military tactics.
But for God’s sake, don’t ask peoples’ immigration status!
In regards to Obama’s promise of 1,200 National Guardsmen spread out from San Diego to the mouth of the Rio Grande, Babeu added, “It will fall short. What is truly needed in 3,000 soldiers for Arizona alone.”
OK, open borders people; this is the wages of your lunacy. This is the big reward for casting away our national sovereignty; losing control of our nation, not just fiscally and politically and economically, but in terms of actually controlling this country so that it is safe for law-abiding Americans.
Question for all of you who call Michele Bachmann and the Tea Partiers “seditious” for advocating limiting the power of government – are the Open Borders, anti-sovereignty people not even more, more directly seditious, since their policies lead directly to the loss of government control over the nation is is charged in our Constitution with defending?
“This will not be so much an anti-tax-and-spend election as an anti-incumbent election!”
It’s one of the things that Dems tell themselves to comfort themselves as they face what looks to be a fairly ugly year for them.
And they’re right. The latest Fox News/Rasmussen/Sean Hannity/Michael Savage poll shows that it is going to be an anti-incumbent year.
Anti Democratic incumbents, anyway; the Fox News/Rasmussen/Sean Hannity/Michael Savage poll shows 37% of respondants in Republican-controlled districts want to flush their incumbents. It’s 49% in Dem-controlled districts.
Yeah, I know. It’s just a poll taken six five months before the election. And it’s only the Fox News/Rasmussen/Sean Hannity/Michael Savage poll. Still, I don’t think anyone would have expected this two years ago.
CORRECTION: I mistakenly referred to the “NPR Poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies/Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research” as the “Fox News/Rasmussen/Sean Hannity/Michael Savage poll”. I regret the misunderstanding.
Is it possible that Obama is losing his most cherished constituency?
The BBC reports of Barack Obama’s speech last night are about as derisive as it would be possible to be about someone you were describing only a few months ago as the incarnation of Hope and Optimism. Yes indeed, the romance is over. The British media have decided that it was all a cruel deception: Obama is just one more ranting populist president who will do anything to divert attention from his own failure to get a grip. And this is not just about BP and the fate of all those pension funds.
And his polls in Muslim countries are collapsing, too.
Tom Emmer has taken some heat – unjustified as usual – for a (out of context) remark in the Marshall newspaper last year:
“I don’t think you can call yourself a freedom-loving American and be a Democrat,” Emmer said. “I don’t think that’s a grassroots Democrat who says now ‘That’s not what I voted for, this isn’t the America I want.’ It’s the leaders of the Democrat party.”
Some Democrats have gotten exercised over the quote, lately – out-of-context, naturally. Of course freedom-loving people can be Democrats…
…even though so many of their leaders S have sided with the world’s totalitarians, mass-murderers and tyrants that it seems Emmer may have been too kind in his treatment of the left:
Senator Edward M. Kennedy offered to work in close concert with high level Soviet officials to sabotage President Ronald Reagan’s re-election efforts and to arrange for congenial American press coverage of General Secretary Yuri Andropov, according to a 1983 KGB document.
That’s Ted Kennedy.
The patron saint of the mainstream Left in America.
Actively working with the KGB against then-President Ronald Reagan.
That’s the KGB; they of the Lubyanka and the Black Marias and the Gulag and show trials and sixty million dead Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans. The KGB of the Holodomor, the government-imposed starvation of Ukraine.
One more time from the heart: Ted Kennedy worked with the K G freaking B against a sitting President.
Specifically, Kennedy offered to have “representatives of the largest television companies in the U.S. contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interview.” The idea here would be for the Soviet leader to make an end run around Reagan and make a direct appeal to the American people.
Kennedy suggested that Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters and Elton Raul, the president of the board of directors for ABC, be considered for the interviews with Andropov in Moscow.
That’s Yuri Andropov – former KGB head, one of the architects of the “Prague Spring”, a man with rivers of human blood on his nicotine-stained hands – for whom Ted “Camelot!” Kennedy, leader of the “Mainstream” American left, was serving as a Public Relations flak.
Question for all of you liberal hamsters who were calling Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party “seditious” for fomenting suspicion of government, and who huffed “Don’t you dare question the left’s patriotism” between 2001 and 2008; where is the revulsion?
I’m sure it’ll happen as soon as the mainstream media covers Kennedy’s treachery:
The confidential correspondence between Sen. Kennedy and Soviet agents first came to light in a Feb. 2, 1992 report published in the London Times entitled “Teddy, the KGB and the Top Secret File.
To sum up: A mainstream liberal leader goes behind the back of the sitting President to double-deal with not just any foreign power, but the most murderous group of butchers in human history, because he saw them as the reasonable party.
Of course it was a rare, one-off aberration, right?
So it might be possible to be a freedom-loving American and a liberal Democrat. But I’d love someone to explain the baggage for me.
The Supreme Court released opnions on four cases on Monday, the third-to-last day for such releases (as I understand it, and stop me if I’m wrong) this term.
That leaves them 20 opinions to release over the next two Mondays, including McDonald Vs. City of Chicago, the likely-to-be-landmark Second Amendment case that, if all goes well, will force all state and local governments to treat the Amendment as the founding fathers wrote it; a right of The People . Not the National Guard or police; not people with political and administrative clout. The People.
Anyone wanna lay odds they hold off until the last decision of the last day of the session, June 28?
I could make Scarlett Johannson the happiest woman in the world.
Let’s see if Tom Scheck and Erick Black start staking out Ms. Johannson’s house.
It might be easier than answering the questions about their coverage of the Emmer campaign.
———-
Tom Emmer launched “Emmertruth” – a site dedicated to countering the media’s context-mangling DFL-agenda-m0ngering – yesterday. And right in the nick of time.
This past April, Emmer appeared on Gary Eichten’s mid-day show on MPR. Eichten asked Emmer a hypothetical question about how he’d hypothetically handle Minnesota’s budget.
Now, as someone who talks on the air live for two hours a week with no more “editing” than a dump button in case Ed starts cursing again, I’ll tell you – every so often you say something on the first try that isn’t quite right. So you take another pass at it. This happens even if you’re very good at speaking off the cuff – which, by the way, Tom Emmer is.
Most print news people – like Erik Black, formerly of the Strib and currently of the MinnPost – have a hard time with this; they can go their entire career without a “rough draft” going out to the public. And MPR’s Tom Scheck perhaps is the wrong person to ask about it, since MPR is about as spontaneous and unedited as the Catholic Mass.
Anyway – according to Emmertruth, this is what happened, with emphasis added by me:
Emmer did initially say the overall budget should be around $40 billion, down from the current level of $60 billion. But seconds later he clarified with the definitive statement that we “can reduce government easily by 20% in the next four years.” When Scheck chose to use the $20 billion figure instead of the more definitive final word on the question, he made a critical and material journalistic mistake.
Here – in Tom Scheck’s piece on the subject, which extensively quotes state bureaucrats on why Tom Emmer should not cut state bureaucracy – is the quote in question:
In late April, he suggested he could eliminate a third of overall state spending, roughly $20 billion.
You be the judge – but from where I sit, Scheck is wrong, or misleading, when he uses the $20 billion number. Emmer said – in the definitive take on the hypothetical question – he’s cut 20% over 4 years. Not that he’d immediately slash $60 to $40 billion.
It’s not rocket surgery to expect that the local mainstream media will circle its wagons to defend the rest of the media. And some of the regional media, including Erik Black’s former bosses in the Strib editorial board, are pretty transparently working to see a DFLer gets elected governor this fall, as usual. And while I’m the last person in the world to impugn the integrity of MPR News – whose standards I’ve repeatedly praised in the past – their coverage of Emmer bears watching, since Emmer has spoken of cutting the state’s subsidy of MPR.
Black continues:
he has launched a feature called “EmmerTruth,” in which he will set the record straight about distortions of his record, position and statements.The first couple of entries, though, are pretty weak. In one, he complains that MPR reporter Tom Scheck said that Emmer would cut $20 billion in state spending. But Emmer says he never said he would cut $20 billion, only that he could.
And then…what?
He went on to clarify the whole thing!
So why did Scheck choose to go with the initial – and, via Emmertruth, admittedly bobbled – take on the hypothetical, when the clarification is, with a nod to Regis Philbin, “the final answer?”
And why did Black ignore this? Do the facts matter, or is it all about playing “gotcha” with off-the-cuff answers to hypothetical questions?
Black concludes:
I’ve about convinced myself that Emmer owes Scheck an apology.
I’m dying to figure out why.
And he owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)
Let me get this straight: the DFL candidates have been “unclear”, but Emmer “owes” everyone an explanation now – so the DFL and its friends in the media can bag on it at their leisure until the DFL picks a candidate?
Why does the MinnPost hold Republicans to a different standard than the DFL?
DISCLOSURE: I recently signed on to have occasional posts from this blog re-posted on MinnPost. We’ll see how that works out now, won’t we?
UPDATE: Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring and True North covers this as well.
CORRECTIONS: In the original take on this story, I’d forgotten that there is, technically, a GOP primary. That’s right, Leslie Davis and Ole Savior get their moment in the electoral sun. Als0, I had the wrong date for the original broadcast on the Eichten show that spawned this “controversy”.
Since the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) are in full promotion mode trying to keep the “Independence” Ventura Party going long enough to try to try to spoil the Emmer campaign, it’s time to remember the madness that Ventura brings to Minnesota
On King’s show the “Tag-Team” of Jesse Ventura and Oliver Stone staged a vicious “Smack-Down” against Florida Republican Congressman Connie Mack, who serves as Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. (But what does he know about this stuff?)
He’s become a big supporter of Hugo Chavez (on top of being a 9/11 truther):
Having been honored to see a private screening of Stone’s new film [about tropical socialism], the self-styled “libertarian”, Ventura, declared on camera that Stone’s U.S.–bashing Infomercial for Tropical Stalinism “should be mandatory viewing for every U.S. high school senior.” (That’s “mandatory,” remember.)
When a smirking Congressman Mack heard this proposed mandate for the U.S. school curriculum, he pulled a “Jacknife Flip” on his “libertarian” opponent by pointedly asking Ventura how he could suggest enforcing such a thing. Ventura’s stint in the World Wrestling Federation (as both performer and announcer) sprang to the rescue in the reply: he manufactured an impromptu tantrum. For full effect, Ventura’s performance featured hurtful frowns followed by blood-curdling snarls. Congressman Mack, you see, had not addressed Ventura as “Governor,” and so ignited his ire. Needless to add, Governor Ventura never answered the question, as Congressman Mack stood patiently waiting–and smirking.
Maybe he’ll stay in Venezuela.
Ed Kennedy was the target of a staggering number of death threats:
Sen. Edward Kennedy lived under constant assassination threats of his own, sometimes chillingly specific, as he became a target for extremist rage, previously private FBI documents disclosed Monday.
Damn those violent Tea Partiers!
Oh, wait…:
Five years after President John F. Kennedy was killed and shortly after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot, one letter warned that the third brother was next: “Ted Kennedy number three to be assassinated on Oct. 25, 1968. The Kennedy residence must be well protected on that date.”
Nearly two decades later, in 1985, the threats continued, this time including the Republican president as well as the liberal Democratic senator: “Brass tacks, I’m gonna kill Kennedy and (President Ronald) Reagan, and I really mean it.”
Who’da thunk it?
ME: Hi!
REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF LIBERALS (RGOL): Conservatism is fundamentally racist!
ME: Um – beg your pardon?
“RGOL”: Racism oozes from every pore of conservatism!
ME: OK, that’s what we call “bigotry” where I come from, but what the hell, I love a good ad-hominem argument. Do tell!
“RGOL”: Nixon’s “southern strategy” brought all the racists to the GOP!
ME: Er, let’s get back to “the south” in a bit here. You did read my post last week about Jacob Weisberg’s article in that noted racist conservative hangout Slate, that noted there are distinct differences between Northeastern, Southern and Western conservatism, right? How Northeastern conservatism is largely comfortable with big government but with an emphasis on making big government more fiscally sane – think Mitt Romney – and race is largely a non-entity, and in fact part of the roots of Northeastern conservatism are at least partly in the abolition movement? And how Western conservatism, the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan, is fundamentally libertarian, which means racism is anathema, since libertarian government is utterly color blind, and all real racism – the racism that makes people unequal before the law – is entirely a function of excessive and illegitimate government power, right? Which leaves southern conservatism, which certainly had racists among its adherents, but whose fundamental “racism” is at least partly a matter of framing by, well liberals?
“RGOL”: Of course we did. Now – look at this list of southern conservatives and the racist things they’ve said…
ME: OK, you’re more or less dodging the point here. Can individuals be racist? Certainly. I mean, every human in the world is a “we-ist”, more comfortable around and attuned to people like their own community, and less to to people less like them in ways that are manifested as everything from pointed humor to muted suspicion to blind hatred.
“RGOL”: Right. Like conservatism!
ME: Well, no. Liberals too. I mean, mention, say, a white fundamentalist from Mississippi who resurfaces driveways for a living…
“RGOL”: Hah! Dumb redneck wingnut!
ME: …or an NRA member…
“RGOL”: Bigger gun clinging snake-handling cousin-kissing Jeeeeeebus freak hahahahahahahaha!
ME: ….right, or Sarah Palin…
“RGOL”: Hahahahaha! She went to community college! Trig is Bristol’s baby! She can’t even write and has fake boobs and slept with her deputy mayor and …
ME: …or the Japanese…
“RGOL”: Er…what?
ME: Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the godfather of the modern nannystate, did not only order the most singularly racist government action in the past 100 years – the mass internment of American citizens of Japanese descent – but did it after two terms in which he supported California’s deeply racist anti-Japanese immigration laws.
“RGOL”: …
ME: OK, fine, it was seventy years ago. Still, your entire case that “conservatism oozes racism” seems to be based on 1) a bunch of anecdotal stories of Republicans who said racist things 2) a bunch of memes from Media Matters and the like, that largely yank statements by the likes of Rush Limbaugh so far out of context you’re getting into borderline defamation, and 3) framing conservative issues as fundamentally racist.
To which I reply 1) Why does Robert Byrd never make it into those lists, 2) Gosh, a liberal flak group waterboarding context, notify the media, and 3) when your entire argument is designed to try to misleadingly frame your opponent as something evil – and we all agree that racism is a bad thing, right? – then you are committing a crime against truth!
“RGOL”: What are you talking about?
ME: For example, every time a conservative talks about strengthening the Tenth Amendment, some idiot lefty will come back with “That sounds like “states rights”, which was once used to defend slavery.
“RGOL”: Right! Conservatism supports slavery!
ME: {{facepalm}} No. No, we are pretty much the opposite extreme; we are the party of individual self-determination. And, by the way, it is a fact that Jim Crow after 1900 was largely a government initiative that overrode the free market; that in most southern states, the business community – which are stereotypically conservative, right?…
“RGOL”: Bosses! Bosses!
ME: …right. They largely opposed Jim Crow, since Jim Crow took anywhere from 10 to 50% out of their markets!
“RGOL”: But the southerners were racists! And Nixon brought them into the GOP!
ME: Well, no and yes and no. The “Southern Strategy” sought votes from southerners who were upset over a variety of things – federal intrusions into property rights and free association as a matter of principle, the size and growth of government, and the federalization of an awful lot of things that had always been left to the states. And yes, there were no doubt some among ’em that were upset that the Feds poked their nose into race relations – because a racist citizen’s vote counts just as much as yours does. Which galls the crap out of me when I see some of those anti-semitic filth at left-leaning demonstrations, by the way – but I digress. The framing of all southern conservatives’ flight to the GOP as race-related has become part of the conventional wisdom, to the extent that all defenses of the thesis become tautological. Just watch: “The southern strategy was not primarily about race”.
“RGOL”: But the southern strategy was racist because it brought racist southerners into the party…
ME: Thanks. I rest my case.
“RGOL”: …um…
ME: Move along.
“RGOL”: Yeah? Well…what about Arizona?
ME: Jeez. More framing. The Arizona law – which most Americans support, in its final form – is about securing our borders. That is one of the missions of government, no?
“RGOL”: But it’s racist!
ME: Huh? Let me ask you something; if Minnesota were awash in Canadians sneaking across the border, and illegal Canadian immigration were forcing down American wages, and if in coming here they rejected American culture and upheld Canadian culture with their back-bacon and hockey-worship and mass drunkenness, and if the Canadian Army were charging across the border to help out Canadian drug smugglers and killing people on our side of the border, that “illegal” Gordon Fitzpatrick wouldn’t replace the “illegal” Juan Jimenez as the boogeyman du jour?
“RGOL”: But that’s just dumb.
ME: What if our hypothetical Gordon Fitzpatrick was pro-charter schools and anti-card-check?
“RGOL”: Then he’d be racist and he’d hate children…
ME: Er, yeah. Look – do our laws mean anything, or do they not? Are we a sovereign nation, or are we not?
“RGOL”: Er…huh?
ME: …
“RGOL”: You are obviously a racist.
ME: Riiiiight.
“My other car is Dadaism”
Wouldn’t it be ironic if, after all the caterwauling that California has been engaging in over Arizona’s immigration law, it turned out that Cali had pretty much the same law?
Why yes. It would:
My name is Harold R. Beasley, Sr. I am a retired Border Patrol Agent. I live in Sierra Vista, AZ. Telephone number 520-XXX-XXXX. I was the Deputy Chief Patrol Agent in San Diego for 5 years (1996 to 2001). I then transferred as an Assistant Chief Patrol Agent to Tucson, Arizona and then retired in 2002.
I did a little research and found that California has the same law (Penal Code 834b) on their books and are complaining about Arizona just passing our New Immigration Law. Wow, is this the pot calling the kettle black?
Please note the last section 834(b)(c). Looks like Los Angeles and San Francisco Mayors have violated California Law and should be investigated by the Attorney General of California.
I think it’s high time we profiled all currently0sitting California politicians.
Back during the 2008 race, a local leftyblogger called the NARN in a state of high-dudgeon over my statemenat Erik Paulsen was running a conservative campaign for the Third Congressional District.
The caller bellowed “You’re a Liar!!!”, which is leftyblogger-speak for “I disagree with you, but I can’t coherently articulate why”.
My point at the time: the “Conventional Wisdom” (a fancy term for “the current of thought among the DFL and their friends in academia and the media”) was saying that the Third was “purple”, and that any Republican hoping to win would have to “run to the center” and be a “moderate Republican” (which is again DFL/media/academic code for “willing stooge of the DFL”) a la the departing moderate Jim Ramstad to have any hope of riding out the rising Obama tide – and yet Paulsen was solidly center-right on all the issues that mattered.
So it’s kinda fun to look at the American Conservative Union ratings of our current House delegation. Betty McCollum, Al Franken, Keith Ellison all get “0” on a 1-100 scale; Oberstar and Walz tie at a nearly-Trotskyite “4”.
On the other hand, Michele Bachmann has a lifetime “100”; “Extremist” John Kline also dialed up a 100 this past year, better than his lifetime rating of a thoroughly respectible 88…
…which happens to be exactly the same as Paulsen’s rating this past year.
Which is twenty points better than Jim Ramstad’s rating of 67.
Further proof that the only real information comes from the right.
I sent this message to Senator Tarryl Clark, who is the DFL-endorsed candidate to run against Michele Bachmann in the Sixth District
I’m Mitch Berg, co-host (with Ed Morrissey) of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, heard every Saturday on AM1280 The Patriot in the Twin Cities.
I read your release last week in which you criticized Rep. Bachmann for limiting her appearances to conservative media – and I saw an opportunity.
I’d like to invite you to come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network for a couple of segments one of these Saturdays. Ed and I are respectful but acerbic interviewers; we’ve interviewed RT Rybak, Dane Smith, Rochelle Olson and Erik Black, and overall I’ll put the quality of our “across the aisle” interviews up against anything on the radio in Minnesota, public or private.
Since across-the-aisle conversation obviously concerns you as much as it does us, I hope you’ll avail yourself of the opportunity to address the conservative audience.
Thanks,
Mitch Berg
AM1280 The Patriot
I’ll keep you all posted.
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.
(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:
Join us!
We’ve been covering the DFL’s chanting points for the past month or so.
As the DFL still has two months to go until they get to the primary, they still have eight weeks of internecine bloodletting before they actually have to try to unite behind Mark Dayton.
And so the regional media and the left-leaning “alternative” media are focusing their coverage of the Emmer campaign on a number of chanting points whose relation to factuality doesn’t stand up to the most cursory examination….
…but then, chanting points aren’t supposed to. They are responses to Josef Göbbels’ classic Public Relations dictum “if you want people to believe a big lie, repeat it often enough”.
They’ve got the repitition part down, of course; you can practically trace the Minnesota leftyblog chain of command [1], watching the various memes – Chanting Points – making their rounds, starting with the big DFL-affiliated blogs, and filtering their way down to the little footsoldier blogs.
The purpose of the “Chanting Points Memo” is to give you, the conservative in the street who may not spend your time living and breathing politics, the material you need to respond to some of the tripe the DFL is spreading about when you hear it from your DFL friends, relatives and co-workers – not so much to convince them, as to make sure any undecided or non-aligned voters that are in on the conversation can get the actual facts. From you!
So let’s run down the big Chanting Points offenders so far in the Gubernatorial race:
“The GOP is in disarray because Tom Horner and Arne Carlson oppose Tom Emmer”: This is often followed with “Tom Horner is a Republican. End of Story”, from the kind of people who believe that saying “end of story” actually ends the story. See below.
Right. And the DFL is in disarray because Randy Kelly and Norm Coleman aren’t part of it. Right?
It’s balderdash, of course. While Horner, Carlson and Dave Durenberger were part of the GOP mainstream twenty-odd years ago, before conservatism made any serious inroads in the party, today they are relics of an era when the old “Indpendent Republican” party was no less a big-government, big-tax party than the DFL. Just like Kelly and Coleman are, by DFL standards, fossils from an era when Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey combined their “progressive” ideals with a staunch patriotism and the sense that the the taxpayer wasn’t a ripe suck that deserved what they got and should just shut up already.
[1] Oh, I know – it’s not a literal chain of command, except as re the Minnesoros “Independent”, which takes its orders from the supremely-ironically-named “Center for Independent Media”. But watching memes circulate through regional leftyblogs is a bit like watching word spread through a bee hive that there’s a pollenating flower nearby.
“Tom Horner is a Republican! End of Story! Hahahahaha!” – Right. He’s part of the big-government, big-tax, big-spending wing of the GOP; the part that has been so completely marginalized within the party that they have to go to places like the “Independence” Jesse Ventura Party to get a shot at running for office.
Since the twilight of Governor Ventura, the “IP” has been mostly a haven for “moderate” Democrats like Tim Penny, cast-off wonks like Dean Barkley, and “Independent Republican” fossils like Horner, who may have been a typical Minnesota Republican establishment figure in the early eighties, but is not today.
Is it possible it’ll backfire on the GOP? Has the GOP moved “too far to the right?” Well, we’ll find out in November, in the only poll that matters. It’s entirely possible the party could lose its shirt this fall – but I”m just not seeing it.
Because what’s interesting is that Republicans who’ve run to the right of the conventional wisdom in the past two cycles – historically awful cycles for the GOP – have done better than the ones that scampered to the center. Michele Bachmann beat back two challenges in a row, and rode out being abandoned by the weak-kneed leadership of the national GOP. Tim Pawlenty took a hard line on taxes and spending – very “red” behavior – and held on in 2006. Erik Paulsen ran well to the right of the conventional wisdom in the Third District, back when that “wisdom” said the Third was “deep purple”; Paulsen may be no Newt Gingrich, but he’s well to the right of his predecessor, Jim Ramstad – exactly the opposite of what the conventional wisdom was saying about the district two years ago.
If bright red carried the day in both of those horrible cycles, what do you think it’s going to do with the Tea Party at its back, in a year that is shaping up to be less “anti-incumbent” than “anti-big goverment?”
“Tim Pawlenty has destroyed Minnesota!” – We’re in mid-recession, and our unemployment rate, while high, is the 13th best in the nation, almost three points below the national average. Check out the states with the best unemployment; most of them conservative-run states outside the deep south. Liberal cesspools California and Michigan, at 48 and 50 on the list, with 12.6 and 14% respectively, are what the DFL would have; high-tax, high-“service” states that, when times get tough, fail with a huge “foomf”.
I’d love to see what would have happened in this past four years had the MNGOP been able to hold even one of the houses of the Legislature; while Pawlenty essentially held the line on spending, he couldn’t stop everything that the DFL’s two-house press threw at him. Spending rose – at a time when it needed to be cut, and cut sharply.
But no – when the DFL says Pawlenty “destroyed Minnesota”, what they mean is “Pawlenty made government a tad less comfortable; he slowed the rate of increase in a way that forced government to have to actually adapt, like all the greasy hoi-polloi have to do when times get tough”.
Goverment hates that. DFL is the party of government. Connect the dots.
“Emmer is running scared!” – Of what?
Polls?
Leaving aside the fact that the only poll that shows dodgy results for Emmer – the “PiPress” poll earlier this week that was commissioned from a company run by a pal of Tom Horner’s – is the most transparently risible exercise in DFL morale-building since…well, the last “Minnesota Poll” – so what? If credible polls taken months before elections mattered, Emmer would have dropped out of the race after Marty Seifert won the Central Committee poll, and won it soundly, last winter.
Emmer spent the winter getting name recognition among Republicans, and bit by bit snuck up on and, finally, defeated Seifert for the nomination. And he did it the old-fashioned way – one voter at a time.
Emmer has always been the underdog. If he’s the underdog now, that’s fine – Mark Dayton has huge name recognition outstate (Entenza doesn’t matter, and I’m verging on saying Kelliher doesn’t either), but after the primaries, when Minnesota voters look at the DFL slate and say “Oh, that Mark Dayton?” It’s fair to say that someone meeting Tom Emmer stands a great chance of coming away a supporter; someone meeting Mark Dayton may need a cup of coffee, stat.
“Emmer is an extremist!” – Over what? His push to fundamentally rebuild government into a more responsible, less costly, less-entitled institution? Most Americans and Minnesotans agree these days.
Over Arizona’s immigration law? Emmer supports the same law – which does not allow profiling – that nearly two in three Americans do.
Emmer is the mainstream candidate. Which is the only reason the DFL and their blog friends need to keep repeating the lie that he’s not; it’s the only response they have.
We’ll do another digest after the DFL and their pals in the media and their kept blogs send some of these memes to the showers and wheel out some new ones.
A North Dakota bike tour M bars a Minnesotan for objecting to a community prayer…
…over, and over, and over, and over…
Morgan Christian, 54, of St. Paul, rode the 500-mile CANDISC [“Cycling around North Dakota in Sakakawea Country”] tour three consecutive years. He objected last summer to a prayer said before a meal at a public high school gym in Turtle Lake, one of several host communities along the route.
Christian expressed his objections to the minister and ride director and in subsequent e-mails to the State Parks and Recreation Department. He said he expected an apology but instead received a letter from the bike tour committee telling him he wasn’t welcome back.
I’ll just bet he “expressed” his objections…
“If I don’t say something, who am I?” Christian said. “I’m going to be the guy who stands up and says there are people who don’t think this is wonderful. It is an imposition. There could be a moment of silence, or at least a warning that prayer is going to be said.”
But instead you chose to be the self-glorifying narcissist who has to make your worldview the focus of attention. You chose to whiz in your host’s wheaties.
North Dakota Parks and Recreation Director Mark Zimmerman said Christian’s attitude was the issue, not his religious beliefs. Ride director Hillary Nelson said Christian disrespected the ride and the town.
“This was Turtle Lake’s way of representing their community,” she said. “If he didn’t like what was going on, he could have left.”
What? Quietly? What are you,crazy?
Christian said he was just standing up for himself.
“I don’t think I raised my voice all that much. Whether I appeared agitated, I don’t know,”
Read: He was a howling, screaming little prick.
he said, adding that he has contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom from Religion Foundation about the issue.
And that’ll be the end of the CANDISK ride.
Thanks, Morgan. It’s all about you.
Rob Port at Say Anything on Mitch Daniels’ soft-footing social issues:
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is pro-life and a Christian but wants focus on fiscal rather than social issues given the state of the nation’s economy and budget.
Does this kill off his hopes for a candidacy in 2012?
Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.”
And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues. We’re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while,”
I think that’s the big lesson of the Tea Party so far, not to mention of the Reagan administration: if you don’t conquer government’s addictions to spending and taxes, then we’re screwed on the social issues anyway – and as luck’d have it, most candidates that are conservative on spending and taxes are on the right side of the social issues anyway.
Are ACORN employees dropping the dime?:
The radical activist group ACORN “works” for the Democratic Party and deliberately promotes election fraud, ACORN employees told FBI investigators, according to an FBI document dump Wednesday.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group, are FBI investigators’ reports related to the 2007 investigation and arrest of eight St. Louis, Mo., workers from ACORN’s Project Vote affiliate for violation of election laws. All eight employees involved in the scandal later pleaded guilty to voter registration fraud…The handwritten reports by FBI agents show that ACORN employees reported numerous irregularities in the nonprofit group’s business practices.
“But it’s only voter registration fraud”
Why pay for registrations alone?
According to one report, an ACORN employee said the purpose of “[f]raudulent cards” was “[t]o cause confusion on election day to keep polls open longer,” “[t]o allow people who can’t vote to vote,” and “[t]o allow to vote multiple times.”
Another report quotes an employee saying, “Project Vote will pay them whether cards fake or not – whatever they had to do to get the cards was attitude.” Project Vote pays based on the number of cards and “that’s why they were so reckless,” the report says.
Innocent until proven guilty (or until swept under the table), naturally.
My stepson Will and his wife Eve welcomed little Maeve last night, at their place in Brooklyn.
Hard to believe that the little eight-year-old I first met over twenty years ago has a kid of his own now…
I checked out the big headline on Twin Cities überleftyblog MNPublius this morning, and I started to worry:
Horner campaign gaining support of influential Republicans
…and read the lede…
Tom Horner is becoming a serious problem for Tom Emmer and the Republican party.
“Wow”, I thought. “This could be serious business. What “influential Republicans” have lined up behind the big-tax, big-spend, big-government Horner?
I read on, drum roll playing in my head:
To which I responded “Huh” and “Huh”?
Two press guys? One for a Congressman who ran too far to the center and got beaten in 2006, and another that’s been out of the governor’s office for years?
Two guys who’ve never won an election?
Two guys who may have never even changed a single person in their lives to switch a vote?
One guy I’ve never, ever heard of, and another that I dealt with oh-so-briefly back during, if memory serves, George W. Bush’s first term? Both of whom I suspect are known only to wonks and media people, are utterly unknown to anyone who doesn’t eat, drink and live politics?
It’s ludicrous, and I suspect even Jeff Rosenberg knows it.
Here’s what’s happening: faced with Emmer’s two-month head-start and very anti-establishment message, and knowing that at the end of that they’ll have to sell Minnesota either a national laughingstock or a woman whose entire platform is summed up “spend money like a crack whore with a stolen Platinum card”, the entire regional Sorosphere (paid or not) is trying to repeat a couple of transparently bogus lines so many times that people start to believe them:
I’ll say this in their defense; if I was looking forward to having to support someone like Mark Dayton or Margaret Anderson Kelliher against a Tom Emmer, I’d stick with repeating big lies in the hopes that gullible voters will believe it, too. After all, it worked 18 months ago.
…when the left furrowed its collective brow and fretted at endless length over the “avalanche of violence” – a brief spike in phone threats and a mysteriously-cut gas line – after the Administration and the Congressional Democratic Caucus rammed Obamacare down the nation’s colletive throat?
When all conservative speech, including this blog, was being carefully sifted for evidence of “sedition” and “incitement?”
The American Left certainly doesn’t; the rabbi who videotaped Helen Thomas’ Turner Diary moment is being deluged with death threats.
The tension of sitting and waiting for a Tea Partier to commit any kind of violence must be making them snap.