:The post could also be entitled “Every Single DFL-Linked Blog On Emmer’s Tip Credit Proposal”.

Because I must have seen twenty different variations on TOM EMMER THINKS WAITRESSES MAKE TOO MUCH in the leftyblogs the past couple of days.

I’d love to talk with one of these people – any one of whom may or may not have worked as a food/beverage server, but of whom none I suspect have ever run  small business that wasn’t a “political consultancy” of some sort or another – and ask ’em a few questions.

It might go something like this:

MITCH: So – how much is something worth?

A FICTIONAL BUT ALL TOO REALISTIC LEFTYBLOGGER:What the Government says it’s worth!

MITCH:  Uh huh.  So if you’re buying, say, a Prius from me…

AFBATRL:…yaaaaaaay!

MITCH: …and I charge you $80,000, will you buy it?

AFBATRL: Oh, bogus, dude. That’s more than I want to spend!  No Prius is worth that much.

MITCH:  Right.  Exactly.  So if I try to sell a Prius for more than you are naturally willing to spend for it, nobody will buy it.  Right?

AFBATRL:  OK, I guess.

MITCH: OK, so what if I have a car lot with ten Priuses, that cost me $15,000 wholesale…

AFBATRL:  …what’s that?

MITCH: …er, from the factory, and I sell them to people for $1 a piece?

AFBATRL:  Ooh!  Yeah!  You can do that?

MITCH:  No.  I’ll go broke. 

AFBATRL:  So what?  You’ll have ten buyers!  With Priuses!  That’s what busiensses need, right?  Buyers?  You get buyers, Mother Gaia gets Priuses!

MITCH:  {{facepalm}}

AFBATRL:  Blogger Berg?

MITCH:  Yeah, I just…OK.  So say you own a restaurant. 

AFBATRL:  A vegan breakfast place!

MITCH: Whatever.  And after you play for your supplies and rent and taxes, you have nine dollars an hour to pay for labor – your waitstaff.  You’ve got a decent location – lots of traffic, a neighborhood full of single couples without kids…

AFBATRL:  …yaaaay!

MITCH: …so you wanna make sure you have plenty of service.  So do you pay one waitress nine dollars an hour, or do you pay three of them $3.00 an hour apiece?

AFBATRL:  Simple.  You pay three of them nine dollars an hour!  Because $3,50 is not a living wage!

MITCH:  Well, wait!  You can’t afford that!  If you do that, you’ll be losing $18 an hour, every hour!

AFBATRL:  Well, there must be some sort of government program…

MITCH: Well, hold on a minute – a good waitress can get tips!   I mean, do the math; fifteen tables – five tables to a waitress – each getting three $30 tabs per morning rush between 6-9AM, paying 15% tips after allowing for deadbeats, equals $67 per morning per waitress – which is $18 an hour, counting the $3 you’re paying them. 

AFBATRL:  Oh, yeah!  I read on “Tom Emmer’s Minnesota” that he said that a waitress can make $100,000 a year!  So why aren’t the waitresses in my vegan breakfast joint making that kind of money?

MITCH:  Look, there are no guarantees.  Being a waiter, a bartender, a cocktailer, depends on how good you are, and where you work – and the better you are, the more you can earn.  Someone pouring coffee at a truckstop in Valley City North Dakota might make a few bucks a day; someone working at Manny’s, serving $600 in meals per table to people who are used to tipping 20% for good service, can make hundreds of dollars in an evening. 

AFBATRL:  So why don’t I pay my staff hundreds of dollars a day, and make it easier?

MITCH:  Because you would have to add more than 20% to the cost of your food to pay them, which means at least 20% fewer people would come in to your restaurant.

AFBATRL:  So we’d need a bailout!

MITCH:  Er…

AFBATRL:  Hey, I do have a question.

MITCH:  What?

AFBATRL:   What is this concept of “tipping” you keep talking about?

Just a hunch.

Bill Salisbury, the longtime Capitol reporter for the PiPress, is a generally credible reporter on Minnesota politics issues.

But even Deans of Journalism make their errors.

Salisbury wrote in this piece (to which I’ll add emphasis):

A liberal advocay [sic] group today released the first TV ads attacking Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.

The political arm of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota spent more than $500,000 to start running the 30-second spots statewide, according to their press release.

In the interest of clarity, Salisbury should have written “A liberal advocacy group today released the first TV ads attacking Republican candidate Tom Emmer that the DFL and Minnesota left actually had to pay real money for“.

Otherwise, great job!

“Ignore the fact that Mark Dayton is a trust fund baby who lives off of capital gains. Look at that caricature CEO!  Let’s get him!”

The Great Plains  – from North Dakota through Texas – are   becoming an economic hotbed, especially given the lousy general economy:

On a drizzly, warm June night, the bars, galleries, and restaurants along Broadway are packed with young revelers. Traffic moves slowly, as drivers look for parking. The bar at the Donaldson, a boutique hotel, is so packed with stylish patrons that I can’t get a drink. My friend, a local, and I head over to Monte’s, a trendy Italian place down the street. We watch a group of attractive 30-something blondes share a table and gossip. They look like the cast of the latest Housewives series.

It might sound like an evening in the Big Apple, but this Broadway runs through downtown Fargo, N.D. A decade ago, this same street was just another unremarkable central district in a Midwestern town: bland restaurants, adequate hotels, no decent coffee. After the local stores closed for the day, the street was mostly populated by a few hard-drinking louts.

Now, that’s the downtown Fargo I remember!

Throughout the good times and, more important, the bad of this new millennium, the cities of the plains—from Dallas in the south through Omaha, Des Moines, and north to Fargo—have enjoyed strong job growth and in-migration from the rest of the country. North Dakota boasts the nation’s lowest unemployment rate—3.6 percent in May, compared with the national average of 9.7—with South Dakota and Nebraska right behind it.

What do these states have in common? Besides energy, I mean?

Good, conservative government (except possibly Nebraska).  North Dakota’s Republican-controlled legislature meets every other year, and hasn’t gotten a pay raise since the 1890’s; they get $5 a day (although the per diems do make it possible for people to actually do the job).

The trend has been particularly strong in urban areas. Based on employment growth over the last decade, the North Dakota cities of Bismarck and Fargo rank in the top 10 of nearly 400 metropolitan areas, according to data analyzed by economist Michael Shires for Forbes and NewGeography.com. Much of that growth has come in high-wage jobs. In Bismarck, the number of high-paying energy jobs has increased by 23 percent since 2003, while jobs in professional and business services have shot up 40 percent.

That’s not bad for a region best known by East Coast pundits for the movie Fargo.

It’s not all farming and oil, as anyone who’s been through Fargo knows:

Nowhere is this potential clearer than in Fargo, which is emerging as a high-tech hub. Doug Burgum, from nearby Arthur, N.D., founded Great Plains Software in the mid-1980s. Burgum says he saw potential in the engineering grads pumped out by North Dakota State University, many of whom worked in Fargo’s large and expanding specialty-farm-equipment industry. “My business strategy is to be close to the source of supply,” says Burgum. “North Dakota gave us access to the raw material of college students.”

Microsoft bought Great Plains for a reported $1.1 billion in 2001, establishing Fargo as the headquarters for its business-systems division, which now employs more than 1,000 workers. The tech boom … has spawned both startups and spin-offs in everything from information technology to biomedicine. Science and engineering employment statewide has grown by 31 percent since 2002, the highest rate of any state.

Now, when you bring up the relative prosperity of the conservative plains compared to DFL-plagued Minnesota, the inevitable counterwhinge is “yeah, well…it’s all because of oil!”

And it’s true – there is oil:

But the biggest play by far is in energy, including coal, natural gas, and oil, which exist in prodigious quantities from Texas to the Canadian border. Besides the vast reserves of oil that have made it the country’s fourth-largest producer, North Dakota possesses significant deposits of natural gas and coal, as well as huge potential for wind power and biofuels…The energy boom has placed states like the Dakotas and Texas in an enviable fiscal situation. Oil and gas revenues are filling up their coffers, allowing them to eschew the painful cutbacks affecting most coastal states. North Dakota has a $500 million surplus, and next year the cash gusher could rise to more than $1 billion, estimates Dragseth. That could go a long way in a state with barely 600,000 people.

Next time some irritating lefty pundit yaps that the Twin Cities will become a “cold Omaha” if we don’t jack up taxes, tell ’em “bring it on”.

Two weeks ago over on True North, Jeff Peil – who works at my radio station, AM1280 – wrote an article that cast a gimlet eye on “Girl’s State”, an annual mock government exercise sponsored (along with “Boys State” – perhaps two of the last non-coed educational exercises in America) by the American Legion and its Auxiliary.

Peil had gotten an email from a parent who was unimpressed by one of the products of the exercise:

 An irate parent forwarded me a handout his 16-year-old daughter received this past weekend at a “Girls State” retreat sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary.

Juniors in high school are invited to attend these Girls State retreats…While most of this seems relatively non-controversial, this year’s Girls State has ruffled a lot of feathers.  This year it was held at Bethel College from Sunday, June 13th – Saturday, June 19th.  During the course of the week, the daughter of my “irate” friend sent his father several emails decrying how left-wing the event was.  The father dismissed these, thinking he had simply trained his daughter well how to identify leftist propaganda.  Little did he realize that his daughter would come home with written proof of the left-wing agenda the group promotes.

Here is an exerpt – read Peil’s piece for the entire list:

Rules for Girls State – 2010

1. Never do housework.  No man ever made love to a woman because the house was spotless.

2. Don’t imagine you can change a man – unless he’s in diapers.

3. What do you do if your boyfriend walks out? You shut the door.

And more, in the same post-Sex-in-the-City vein.

Peil:

Now while something like this might be relatively non-controversial for women looking to boost their self-esteem and feminine comraderie, this was not a group of women.  This was a group of 16-year-old girls.  More importantly, these girls often attend this to have a resume padder for college applications.  The highly selective event offers young women an exposure to civics that not every high school girl gets, and thus makes the applicant stand out.  I ask you – what does this have to do with civics?

With all due respect to my colleague Peil – without whose talents as a salesman the Northern Alliance would not be on the air – I wonder if he’s watched Congress, or even most of the advertisements coming from Madison Avenue, lately?

No, there’s more to it than that.

———-

It was about thirty years ago last week that I and about a dozen other guys from Jamestown trekked off to Fargo on a Sunday to take part in Boy’s State.  Of the dozen from Jamestown, I think I was picked last – everyone above me had other plans.  So I squeaked in.

It was…different.  The presenting reason was about civics, of course – but I couldn’t help but thinking that the American Legion had an underlying motive; show us a little of the military life, too.    We were organized into eight “Counties”, which were about platoon-sized (and split into a couple of squad-sized “cities”), and led by a “counselor” who happened also to be an NDSU ROTC candidate.  These “counties” marched around in double file; we woke to reveille every morning, were shown how to make hospital corners on our dorm beds, had our rooms inspected by a couple of humorless highway patrolmen; minor transgressions rated pushups or minor hazing; being caught with “contraband” – booze, usually, although the list included drugs, porn and smokes – meant being sent immediately home to face the wrath of the local Legion chapter that had, we were reminded, paid our way (which, in a small town, was powerful deterrent; I think I heard of one kid being tossed).   We assembled at night for “taps” and to retire the colors, and had “lights out” at 10:30PM.

It was a whirlwind of activity; we divided up into two parties, the “Federalists” and “Nationalists”, by luck of the draw; I was a Fed.  We held a county caucus (mandatory) right after dinner Sunday.  I spoke; apparently that was all it took to get elected County party chair, which sent me to a 10PM meeting with the other seven chairs; they apparently liked my style, because by the end of my first evening I was the Chairman of the North Dakota Federalist Party.

Score.

The best part?  I would get to spend my first couple of days exempt from marching around with my platoon county.  I had early – 7AM – meetings every day with other party people; I had to get going early, and I’d gotten half an hours’ work done by the time the rest of my platoon county had gotten to breakfast.

But I also had to run the State Convention the next day.  It involved four hours of standing at a podium trying to conquer Robert’s Rules of Order on the fly.  And after that?  An all-night session of writing a party platform and designing a campaign for the state executive office races…

…the next day. 

Now, it’ll come as little surprise that I wrote most of the platform.  It SHOULD surprise you that it was so far to the left it would have made Paul Wellstone blanche with horror.  And boy, was I cynical; much of the platform was blatant pandering.  It was so far to the left that my “enemy”, the Nationalist Party chair, when he came to my college four years later to recruit for the Campus Republicans, recognized me and asked “so are you still super-liberal?”  I was a conservative by this point.

But between that and the campaign I designed – featuring a REALLY tight stage production that, yes, did in fact reflect my training in broadcast production values – we did in fact win the governor’s office and nine of the twelve executive offices. 

I went on to win an election to the Legislature, and then House Minority leader – all by Wednesday of that busy, crazy week.

And the House met for several sessions.  And by about Friday of that week of waking up at 6AM and going to sleep maybe at midnight (good behavior got us some later “lights outs”), some of the debate got a little blue, by PG-rated North Dakota 1980’s standards.

Friday afternooon,  someone – a Nationalist, naturally – introduced a resolution calling for the legalization of prostitution in Pisek, North Dakota, in the interest of helping spur economic activity in the depressed little city. 

It got debated for close to two hours, and I recall – and then got sent back from the Senate, before going (as I recall) on to get vetoed by the governor; the override survived. 

It was by far the most-debated bill in the session.  It was probably something none of us told our parents or our Legion sponsors about.   It was, of course, the inevitable result of putting a couple of hundred seventeen-year-old boys, punchy from long days and unfamiliar places and lousy food and constant immersion among strangers and strange jobs and strange rituals, into a room together.

And it was probably the most thorough education in how a bicameral legislature works that any of us have ever had.

———-

One of the Girls’ Staters posted a link to Peil’s article on a Facebook page, and True North got some feedback.

When I read the initial article, I was a little nervous; had the American Legion Auxiliary knuckled under to political correctness?

Emily Schirvar of Stillwater emailed to say not to worry:

In the first place, to accuse the Girls State as upholding “leftist” values is nothing short of ridiculous. As an attendee this year, I can attest that the American Legion Auxiliary’s focus tended more towards the right; I am proud to say, however, that the values we learned there were above and beyond party lines. We learned, among other things, to respect our nation’s flag as a sign of national unity and pride–ignoring our own biases to demonstrate an interest in and vision for the country we all share.

Well, that hasn’t changed…

Additionally, the “proof” mentioned in Peil’s blog is nothing more than misplaced evidence: these “rules” were meant to be a type of comic relief. With very full days, beginning at 7 a.m. and continuing as late as 10:30 p.m., laughs were a way to wind down, and relax for a moment; it would be ridiculous to attach ulterior motives.

And the “rules?”

Had the “irate” daughter been paying attention at the assemblies, she would have realized that not only were the “rules” designed as jokes–not to be taken seriously–but the other rule “verbally read by the group administrator” was not meant to be included at all. Receiving the list from a friend, the administrator simply forgot to proofread. Her embarrassment was sufficient, in my opinion, to forgive that mistake–one that the group rectified by not including it in the Moccasin.

Another participant, who asked not to be identified, supported this:

The list was passed on to our administrator from a friend and she didn’t proof-read the list before hand. The administrator apologized profusely and was quite embarasssed. This is why the “rule” did not make it into the list, the administrator in no way wanted that to be advertised by Girls State or the American Legion.

It is unfortunate that the young woman missed out on one of the most important lessons of Girls State: that our actions have consequences, good or bad, and in order to change the world, we must first arm ourselves with knowledge. Perhaps, had she considered this, she would have had a better experience at Girls State.

Another participant – let’s call her “Participant B” – added:

The girls were not given an option as to which party they belonged to, which provided new insight to those who were in a party that may not have shared the same views as them. Never did the Girls State program endorse one party or promote a certain party’s point of view. The guest speakers’ political views varied. In fact, one guest said she was so right-wing, “she made Rush Limbaugh look liberal.”

As far as the “Rules for Girls State” go, I cannot understand how any of those jokes could be considered part of the “left-wing agenda.” You would be hard-pressed to find a Democrat who believes we should build malls on the moon or that a man’s mind is “too little to be let out alone.” I ask YOU, Jeff Piel: What do any of those “rules” (which are nothing more than jokes) have to do with a left-wing agenda?

Well, there  is a certain amount of anti-male baggage with the part of feminism that’s tied itself to the left in America – and if our nation’s high school juniors are unaware of this, it’s either very good news or very bad news – but I suspect that if the American Legion Auxiliary ever becomes a hotbed of this train of thought, our nation will have much bigger problems to deal with.

 Schirvar challenges bloggers:

…I have heard about the “evils” of bloggers who neglect to do their fair share of research before acting as “experts” on a topic. It is disappointing, then, to find such a clear example of this occurrence. Although no one asks bloggers to be completely without slant, it would have been more honorable had Peil at least tried to find out about the other side of the story. Far from “leftist propaganda”, as he calls it, the week-long event was an intensive look into how government works–at times the Girls State citizens were asked to put aside their prejudices for the sake of the experiment, and many (myself included) would say that this unique look into new ideas helped each one of us grow as individuals.

 “Participant B”:

I’m sad to disappoint you, Jeff Piel, but the American Legion’s Girls State 2010 was entirely non-partisan and completely worthwhile.

On the one hand, it’s not the biggest controversy True North has gotten into.  On the other hand, the generation that’s going to be taking things over in thirty years or so is kinda vital.

Thanks for all the response!

I’m replacing a 15 foot length of chain link fence in my backyard, which got demolished when the builders put in the slab for my new garage.  The original, built in the early 1900s, was edged right at the property line; the new code says they have to be set back two feet from the line, which put the slab a good foot over the old fence line.

Anyway – I’m recycling a lot of the chain link fabric – but I’m going to need to dredge up 10-15 feet of fabric.  Now, Menards and Home Depot and the like only sell it in 50-foot rolls, which means I’ll be sitting on 35 feet of spare fabric if I go that route.  Which I’ll do if I need to…

…but I’m wondering if anyone out there happens to have a few feet (say, less than 15 of ’em) of chain link fabric lying around that they’re willing to rummage-sell?

(Ironically, I did.  For years.  It sat in my garage, waiting for  a fencing project that never came, left-over from when I built my garden pen in 1995.  I tossed it – when I cleaned out my old garage.  To “lessen the fire hazard”.  Blah).

Can a little known newspaper publisher author a different ending for Tom Horner’s campaign?

If there truly exists a halfway point between gadfly and contender in the realm of politics, Independence Party gubernatorial hopeful Rob Hahn has staked his long-on-moxy and short-on-funds campaign on finding just such an electoral sweet spot. A distant undercard to the expensive heavyweight battle royale occuring on the DFL side of the ballot, the IP’s primary focus on promoting erstwhile liberal Republican Tom Horner has been complicated by the would-be William Randolph Hearst. 

While Hahn might be unknown to most voters (I passed one of the few visible signs of his campaign – a billboard near Rockford – this past week), the man claiming to be the “only real independent running for governor” has gained minor traction with the only section of the electorate paying close attention to politics in general – the media.  From announcing his running-mate selection, to calling on Horner to drop out of the race, and even his policy proposal of using riverboat gambling to enhance the state’s coffers, Hahn has been granted a level of legitimacy seemingly far surpassing his likely ability to wrest away the IP’s nod this August.  The real question may be why?

Part of the answer may have less to do with Hahn’s media background and more to do with an agenda that leans heavily on the credible side of his credible fringe candidate persona.  While Hahn’s riverboat gambling concept has received far more press than an idea that at best would only generate $400-600 million a year should get, Hahn has put forward solutions on the budget deficit that sound far more detailed than many of his opponents.  Hahn’s call alone for phasing out LGA funding and a 5-7% across-the-board cut in state government is more intricate and conservative than anything Tom Horner has publically committed to other than tax policies that are apparently to the left of even Matt Entenza.

But what may really fuel the coverage of Rob Hahn’s campaign is his willingness to attack Horner’s most publicized weakness – his unwillingness/inability to release his client list – coupled with the uncertainty of turnout for an August 10th Independence Party primary.

Horner’s lobbying with his now former firm Himle Horner has proven to be the bête noire of his campaign, leading even the Star Tribune to momentarily put down their promotion of Horner’s Republican past to wrap his knuckles over the lack of disclosure.  The issue is a classic political conundrum; Horner is legally bound to keep his clients’ identities hidden while the Strib and Hahn maintain every right to question the inherent conflicts of interest such a past entails.

Can such an issue – or any – prove powerful enough for Hahn to win?  It depends on how exactly hotly the primary will be.  The IP has come a long way since the dog days of the summer of 2000 when party officials publically worried that IP U.S. Senate nominee James Gibson might not be able to defeat the Harold Stassen of the environmental set, Leslie Davis, in the party’s primary (Davis was considered “strong” enough to be included in pre-primary polling questions).  A whopping 5,600 votes were cast that September between four candidates, leaving Gibson – and the party’s fledgling respectability – intact. 

Higher profile races since then have done little to drive turnout.  The IP’s 7 candidate U.S. Senate field in 2008 that featured former appointed Sen. Dean Barkley only saw 11,000 votes.  It would be little wonder then if at least a few political beat reporters believed Hahn capable of gaining the necessary 5,000 or 6,000 votes to pull off a mildly noticed upset.  With Horner and even long-time politicos like Doug Grow floating theories of cross-over mischief, such an outcome hasn’t been completely discounted.

More likely, Hahn’s wrath will be felt in 7-second MPR soundbites and tiny column inches buried in the metro section.  Enough perhaps to provide a respectable margin of defeat 30 days hence but not enough to provide the party’s biggest upset since their candidates wore feather boas.

I started writing this piece here…

I’m not gonna say Operation Repo is “the most addictive show on TV”, as TruTv’s tagline would have us believe.

But it’s mildly diverting on those Monday evenings when I don’t have more pressing or enjoyable business to see to.

I kinda like the characters; Lou Pizarro seems like a stand-up kinda guy, and the supernaturally laid-back Froy Tercero seems like the kind of fella I could pop a top with.

Sonia Pizarro, of course, is a gruff freak show, and Lynda Pizarro strikes me as the kind of budding sadist who will be working as a county bill collector at some point or another.

But I confess that my favorite episodes are the ones where rampaging roid-raging juice-monkey Matt gets maced, tazed or beaten to a pulp.

…until I read that the “reality” show is a scripted “recreation”.

I’m shocked.  Shocked.

John Hinderaker on the latest polls on the Tea Party:

Tea Partiers are people who have a more sophisticated understanding of current events than those who describe themselves as anti-Tea Party. Anyone who doesn’t realize that the exploding federal debt represents a serious threat to our future either is a fool, or doesn’t have children. (That, actually, would make for an interesting survey.)

Here was the part I thought was interesting:

The responses on terrorism are interesting, too: there is evidently a common thread between obliviousness to the dangers of debts we can’t pay and to the dangers of Islamic terrorism, but it is hard to see what that common thread might be, other than blind, stupid loyalty to the Democratic Party.

Read the whole thing?

As the economic news continues to worsen, voters are appropriately growing more surly. That is reflected, I think, in this Rasmussen survey finding that 60% of likely voters–a figure that matches the all-time high–want Obamacare repealed. Maybe that is due to recent news reports about the effects of the government takeover bill, perhaps in part due to a general lack of confidence in the administration’s economic competence.

I did learn one thing (emphasis added):

Disillusion with the Obama administration, which can hardly be disentangled from disgust with the Reid/Pelosi regime in Congress, is reaching dangerous levels–dangerous, anyway, if you’re a Democratic office-holder. In the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza points out that President Obama’s approval rating among whites is almost exactly the same as President Bush’s was two years ago. (I had forgotten, actually, that in 2008 Obama lost the white vote by 12 points. This was, however, a significant improvement on John Kerry’s performance.) It took President Bush seven and a half years to fall to that level; Obama, just 18 months.

So apparently the only reason not to vote for John Kerry was racism, too?

Watch for the DFL smear machine to try to spin this story:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer says Minnesota should factor tips into the hourly pay for minimum wage workers in restaurants and other gratuity-based jobs.

After visiting a St. Paul restaurant Monday on a listening tour, Emmer advocated for a so-called “tip credit” to the state minimum wage.

This is entirely about bringing jobs back to the hospitality business in Minnesota, which has suffered badly in recent years, not only from the economy but from years of ill-advised regulations.

Minnesota is among seven states that currently prohibits employers paying workers less than the minimum wage if they earn tips, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

However, that’s only been true since 1990.  Before then, Minnesota had a tip credit also.

Minnesota has a state minimum wage of $5.25 for small employers and $6.15 for large employers, based on annual sales.

Emmer says tying base pay to tips will “level playing field so the employers can continue to exist, survive and thrive.”

Federal law permits states to drop the minimum wage to tipped employees to $2.13 per hour.

Opponents argue tips are too volatile to count on, especially for workers at the bottom of the pay ladder.

So here’s the question:  are the “workers at the bottom of the pay ladder” better off hustling for tips (which can be volatile and low, and can also be really really good money), or out of work entirely?

Because in this economy, that’s pretty much the choice.

After nearly a decade of demanding that the rest of America never ever call them unpatriotic, Gallup and Pew pollsboth show that, in fact, Democrats are:

Gallup found 58% of GOPer’s calling themselves “extremely patriotic,” as opposed to only 20% of Democrats so identifying. The numbers were a bit closer in the Pew poll, where 69% of Republicans called themselves “extremely proud” to be an American, and 43% of Democrats answered the same.

On one level, the general results should not be surprising. After all, the Right more likely to view America in terms of preserving the core principles that make it great, while the Left is more likely to be fixated on its foibles and failures (both real and imagined).

It’s yet another change Obama has brought us:

But what explains the increase in patriotism on the Right, particularly from 2006 to the present, when Democrats and progressivism has been on the rise? My hypothesis would be that the current version of the Democratic party, and the Obama administration in particular, has transformed big government into a cultural issue.

Don’t be hating.  It’s science.

On the surface, h this NPR piece on the affect of the McDonald decision on Chigago’s fascist,racist gun laws has the superficial appearance of balance:  it’s got two pro-Second Amendment quotes and three antis, which is closer than you might be used to from the “elite” media.

But read between the lines:

Those who support fewer restrictions on guns point to incidents like a recent break-in on Chicago’s West Side — the kind of frightening event that happens far too often in crime-ridden neighborhoods.

“Happened at about 4 in the morning,” says Jose Perez, who lives two doors down from where an armed intruder was breaking into the house of an elderly man and his family. Perez woke up — and heard gunshots.

Pretty common in Chicago these days.  But it’s the shooter that was unusual:

“The guy broke the basement window in the back,” Perez continues. “Mr. Gant heard the noise with the window shattering open. … He got up, I guess got his gun out and the guy made it to the first-floor porch. The other guy fired first and then Mr. Gant fired after him — ended up striking the guy and killing him.”

Thank God, Perez says, the Korean War veteran was able to defend himself, even though this happened a month before the Supreme Court ruling, when owning a handgun in Chicago was still against the law.

The kind of thing that happens all over the US, every day.

“I think he did the right thing,” Perez says. “They’re 80 years old, him and his wife, and the grandson was with them, you know, and he’s about 12 years old. If the intruder would have came in, it would’ve been a tragedy, probably — found the whole family dead, shot up, you know?”…

…So even though it was illegal at the time, having a gun in the home may have saved lives.

The score so far:  Pro, 1 (a neighbor, portrayed in perfect lower-middle-class Chicago vernacular):  Anti, 0.

“It’s a pure case of self-defense, and it’s the kind of thing that needs to happen in the city of Chicago, if you expect the crime rate to drop,” says Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.

Standing outside of Chicago’s City Hall as the City Council was enacting new restrictions on handgun ownership, Pearson argued the city was still going too far. He thinks it will prevent citizens from protecting themselves in their own homes.

The score so far:  Pro, 2 (neighbor, and a representative of an organization NPR has been turning into a boogeyman for the past forty years):  Anti, 0.

But Dr. Richard Keller views guns in the home through a different lens.

“My father had a handgun,” Keller says. “When I was 17 years old, he used it to end his own life.”

His father’s suicide was a shocking, confusing and life-changing event for Keller. In his line of work now, Keller sees many similar self-inflicted gunshot victims: He is the coroner of suburban Lake County.

Tragic, certainly.

But the suicide rate statistic is a red herring; many nations with gun laws every bit as strict as pre-McDonald Chicago’s have suicide rates that dwarf our rate nationwide: Japan’s is over double our rate; Sweden, France, Hong Kong and Canada all have higher rates of suicide than the US.

Dr. Keller:

“I’ve seen cases where if they — very likely, if they had not had a handgun in the home, they would not have used it upon themselves,” Keller says.

That must have been an interesting interview – a coroner interviewing his patients about their motivations.

It’s an absurd statement – when other nations’ suicide rates are higher, clearly something other than the availability of guns is at issue.

Modern psychology is still trying to unpack suicide – but it seems fairly clear that those who use handguns are not “looking for attention”. They want out, fast.  As Japan’s example shows, those who want to check out that bad will find a way, whether guns are available or not.

Keller:

I have plenty of job security. There will always be deaths. I don’t need things going on that are likely going to increase the business of the coroner’s office.

Most civil liberties cause some problem for some government official.  As Alito noted in his majority opinion, it’s not a reason to abandon the liberty.

So that’s Pro,2: Anti, 1.

Thom Mannard of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence challenges the assertion that having guns in the home makes families safer.

“The evidence shows that handguns in the home are more likely to be used in a suicide, an unintentional shooting or a homicide with family members in that home than ever used in self-defense,” Mannard says.

Really?

Says who?

Got any research on that?

We don’t know.  The NPR reporter didn’t bother to ask, or to link to it.

I suspect it’s a latent 17 year old chanting point – the infamous New England Journal of Medicine study from the nineties that “showed”  that a gun in the home was 43 times more likely to kill the owner or “someone the owner knew” than a burglar.

Of course, most of the “43” were suicides; of the remainder, most were drug dealers killing other dealers, or customers who owed them money, or classmates shooting each other for Starter jackets – all of them “people the gun owner knew”.  It also included cases of estranged spouses shooting abusive ex-spouses in justified self-defense; the principals most definitely “knew each other”.

The study didn’t control for any of this, or account for deterrence rather than killing of criminals, or for the backgrounds of the gun owners.  It really turned out that if anyone in the home with the gun had a crime record or record of drug or alcohol abuse, the odds of deterring a crime or killing someone the owner knew were about even; for those without, it was conservatively more than 400:1 in favor of guns.

Was that the the information that was the basis of Mr. Mannard’s statement?

We don’t know.

We rarely do when the mainstream media interviews anti-gunners; they never ask for them to prove their assertions.

Never!

So that’s Pro, 2 (regular schlub and boogeyman):  Anti, 2 (both allowed to make unsupported assertions and references to evidence that’s been pretty roundly shredded!).

Jens Ludwig, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, has done research that he says suggests allowing fewer guns leads to fewer gun deaths.

Mr. Ludwig, unlike many anti-gun researchers, is an academic of some integrity – hence, he has produced work that showed that gun control has no effect on homicide rates.  But their other resarch is not by any means airtight as the NPR report suggests by its utter lack of questioning.

So that’s Pros 2 (a regular guy and a boogeyman), Antis 3 (all of whom make claims that NPR didn’t even dream of asking them to substantiate, or at least didn’t bother to publish the substantiation).

To be fair, it’s as good as we can expect from NPR.

To be honest, we should still expect better.

When the local political listserve “E-Democracy” wanted to complete its slide into being a full-on DFL echo chamber, its management instituted a “civility rule” that, essentially, held that all criticism of liberal opinion was “uncivil”, you knew things were circling the drain.

So it’s a kick to see the news that überliberal haunt “Democratic Underground” – the Dundy, as some of us call it – is h clamping down on criticism of Obama or Democrats:

“Forget about criticizing Obama,” warned PJ Gladnick, Examiner Opinion Zone blogger and operator of a blog called “DUmmie FUnnies” which pokes fun at Democratic Underground members.

So, if you suggest “that a particular point of view is required in order to be a Democrat, liberal, or progressive,” call someone a conservative, make a comment that’s “too rhetorically hot, too divisive, too extreme, or too inflammatory,” prepare to be booted

Here are some more samples of the ludicrous list of rules violations:

“Telling someone to ‘shut up,’ ‘screw you,’ ‘go away,’ ‘f–k off,’ or the like;” “belittling someone for being new or having a low post count; “negatively ‘calling out’ someone who is not participating in the discussion.”

That is just the beginning…

Insensitivity, which includes “weight or other physical characteristics” and “use of insensitive terminology.”

“Over-the-top assertions of bad faith” in Obama, or “advocating voting against Democrats, or in favor of third-party or GOP candidates; broad-brush smears against Democrats generally; broad expressions of contempt toward Democrats generally.”

“A sustained or organized effort to demean, belittle, bully, or ostracize another person; digging up or posting personal information about any private individual, on DU or elsewhere; stalking someone across discussion threads or forums.”

he final tally of new rules: 60. Whew.

Check ’em out.

The net effect of these overstated policies is to decrease discussion, Gladnick said.

He said it’s pretty easy to tell what’s been posted before and after the policies went into affect — before, there was a lot of criticism of the president, especially regarding the oil spill. Now, you can barely find comments implying a misdeed.

“Right now, you really see it about the Gulf,” he said. “Whereas before the rules, DU was rife with criticism of how Obama has handled the oil spill, now, such complaints have ceased.”

Of course, that’s the goal of campaign finance reform, the “internet kill switch” and the Fairness Doctrine.

So maybe the Dundy isn’t so far off track after all.

I’ve been saying for close to twenty years that gun control is the debate that tips the hard left’s hand on civil liberties.  While Democrats have claimed to be the party of the little guy for the past eighty years, gun control was always the debate where the Democrats lined up with the “elites” against the peasants – and, as Glenn Reynolds notes, where the peasants organized themselves over the course of the past fifteen years and beat the “elites”.  And beat them so thoroughly that most of the Democratic Party has abandoned the issue.

Is it symptomatic that we’re seeing what may be  the first Daily Kos diary on trying to make guns a liberal issue?

Liberals can quote legal precedent, news reports, and exhaustive studies [Although they usually don’t – Ed]. They can talk about the intentions of the Founders. They can argue at length against the tyranny of the government. And they will, almost without exception, conclude the necessity of respecting, and not restricting, civil liberties.

Except for one: the right to keep and bear arms.

When it comes to discussing the Second Amendment, liberals check rational thought at the door. They dismiss approximately 40% of American households that own one or more guns, and those who fight to protect the Second Amendment, as “gun nuts.” [I believe the term was “bitter, gun-clinging Jeebus freaks”, or something to that effect – Ed.]  They argue for greater restrictions. And they pursue these policies at the risk of alienating voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats.

And there the writer is correct.  The 1994 Republican landslide was as much a reaction to the 1994 Crime Bill as to Hillarycare.  In Minnesota, it’s a better-than-fair guess that Rod Grams beat Ann Wynia for the Senate seat because of the backlash over the Crime Bill and the organization of Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement.

And they do so in a way that is wholly inconsistent with their approach to all of our other civil liberties.

Those who fight against Second Amendment rights cite statistics about gun violence, as if such numbers are evidence enough that our rights should be restricted. But Chicago and Washington DC, the two cities from which came the most recent Supreme Court decisions on Second Amendment rights, had some of the most restrictive laws in the nation, and also some of the highest rates of violent crime. Clearly, such restrictions do not correlate with preventing crime.

It’d be unseemly to say “I told you so” to someone who is agreeing with me…

So rather than continuing to fight for greater restrictions on Second Amendment rights, it is time for liberals to defend Second Amendment rights as vigorously as they fight to protect all of our other rights. Because it is by fighting to protect each right that we protect all rights.

The obvious answer, of course, is that while grass-roots idealistic “liberals” may indeed be about “fighting to protect all rights”, the overall high-level goal of the movement is to empower government.  And while having the peasants running around making statues of the Virgin  Mary out of elephant dung doesn’t infringe government power, a bunch of citizens with guns does.

Atypically of a Kos kolumn, it’s worth a read; well-reasoned enough to have been written by a conservative on the issue.

Typically for a Kos kolumn, the commenters largely belie the notion that the hard left has learned to think on this issue.

I almost hoped Queen Elizabeth would come out the door of the palace…

…but apparently the Royals don’t have the keen eye for comedy that the rest of us do.

I’ll be doing a special edition of the Northern Alliance (Volume II, “The Headliners”) today, talking with an expert panel about the McDonald decision. We’ll also be talking about the media’s latest chanting points about the Emmer campaign, and finally about the Minnesota Majority’s latest push to inform people about the need to reform Minnesota’s electoral system.

Volume I (John and Brian) and King Banaian are taking the day off, as is Ed.  I would, normally, but there’s no way I can sit out the Saturday after McDonald. Just no way.

Join us from 1-3 on AM1280, or streaming at AM1280thepatriot.com, or on our Twitter feed using the hashtag #narn2.

And so we get to the peak of the peak; the top ten Minnesota Conservatives that Minnesota liberals and Democrats hate!  These, for the most part, are the people who drive Minnesota liberals into paroxysms of rage because…they disagree with them.

Drum roll please!

10. Ed Morrissey: Yeah, I’m surprised the mild-mannered Morrisey made the top ten, too.  Maybe it’s the effortlessness of it all that they hate so much; Ed, my radio colleague, mows through national lefties like a riding mower through a cabbage patch, and doesn’t break a sweat, and makes it back to the Morrissey Mansion in time for reruns of The Wire with the First Mate; he may have more influence on national opinion than Media Matters, and until recently he did it for the love of the game.  If you were George Soros, you’d hate that.

9. Norm Coleman: There is nothing the left hates worst than apostates; we’ve seen how they detest female conservatives throughout this poll; Democrats who flip parties are one circle of Lib Hell removed from them.  Norm flipped when he was mayor of Saint Paul, and went on to be the best Senator this state has had in years, and the best we’re likely to have until at least 2014.

8. Mitch Berg:  Huh?  Me?  A guy with a blog that gets a respectable but strictly-C-list 2,000 visits a day?  OK, I claim home field advantage; I got a lot of votes, but my passion index was the lowest on the Top Ten.  Still, it’s fun to see!  Thanks!

7. Jason Lewis:  Let’s not mince words; Lewis is to Minnesota conservatism what the Wright Brothers were to aviation; before them, conservatism and heavier-than-air flight were both theories; it took them to make it all happen.  Jason Lewis brought the Reagan Revolution at long last to Minnesota.  His impact on politics in this state is easy, and wrong, to understate. Before Jason Lewis, Arne Carlson was the face of the GOP in Minnesota.  Without Lewis, he still very well might be.  And that makes the DFL and media’s (pardon the redundancy) jobs harder.  And we know how liberals hate to work.

6. David Strom: If Jason Lewis brought the Reagan Revolution to Minnesota, David Strom taught that revolution how to invoke Hayek and spell Friedman and, by the way, how to make their representatives do it, too.  If the DFL sold dartboards, his picture would be on them.

5. Michael Brodkorb:  Michael – my former NARN co-host – cut his public-image teeth as the owner of Minnesota Democrats Exposed, and became the Matt Drudge of the Minnesota alt-media almost overnight.  He didn’t just eat the Dems’ lunches every day; he ran laps around them, and never broke a sweat, ever.  If anyone has ever let the air out of the Minnesota political media establishment’s tires, it was Brodkorb.  He’s earned the hate!

4. Katherine Kersten:  The Twin Cities’ leftymedia hated Kersten partly because she didn’t know the secret handshake; she didn’t get her late, lamented column after years of covering city council meetings and dog shows and one-car crashes; she actually had a productive career – but there are few things journos hate worse than people who get printed in newspapers without bothering to join the Order of Most High Priests of Information. And if journos hate her, then the DFL will hate her too (even without considering that she’s a female and a conservative, which puts her beyond the pale); and Democrats hate whomever their superiors tell them to hate.  So Kersten became a reviled figure, even though most of those doing the reviling, the Twin Cities leftyblogs and their followers, had put no more thought into it than dog puts into fetching a stick.   Although she’s #4, she had the second-highest “Passion Index” – average ranking – of anyone in the poll.

3. Rep. Tom Emmer: Of course, there’s almost nobody the Democratics hate more than any conservative who can beat them.  Emmer finished third; I suspect it’ll move up after the Dems have to figure out how to make Mark Dayton beat him this fall.   I suspect Tom’ll make a run for #2.  But not #1.  You’ll see why.

2. Governor Tim Pawlenty:  The DFL hates him for the same reason the Persians hated King Leonidas of Sparta; because he almost singlehandedly stymied them on pure personal and conservative principal for four years, fighting against two DFL-controlled chambers and a media that would have to develop a whole lot of integrity to be called merely “in the bag for the DFL”.   TPaw is only reason all income above the “living wage” hasn’t been confiscated from  you by the State of Minnesota and given to AFSCME.  In a just world, he’d be in the top three contenders for the White House.  He knows how to beat back the DFL like perhaps nobody in history; he’s more than earned the hatred.

And finally, the most-hated conservative in Minnsota…

[trumpet fanfare]

1.  Rep. Michele Bachmann:  It wasn’t even close.  She not only got more votes overall, but never finished lower than #2 in anyone’s rankings, and even then only two or three times.  Her “Passion Index” is just south of a perfect “10”, over two points higher than the next highest contender, Kersten.  Bachmann is everything the left hates rolled up into five feet three inches of explosive charisma; she’s a pro-lifer who’s spent a life putting her money where her mouth is (five biokids and a couple dozen foster kids), she’s been sounding the most articulate jeremiads about the federal spending orgy of anyone on Capitol Hill; she is one of the faces of the Tea Party (which, to the horror of the left, is led and largely peopled by women);  she endures the most scabrous assaults of anyone in Washington, slips them all and bobs back up smiling and shooting from the hip (with an AR15 – oh, yeah, she’s a perfect 100 on Second Amendment issues, too).  Bachmann is unabashedly Christian and Reaganite and Pro-shining-city-on-the-hill – all things that give Minnesota liberals seizures.  And not only is she a woman, but she’s among the leaders of this year’s conservative female revolution, which threatens to undercut the Democratics’ traditional monopoly on the female vote.

You can see steam shoot out of lefties’ ears when her name is mentioned – partly for what she stands for, and partly for how she does it; with the pure glee that comes from always kicking your opponents’ asses in every way.

Congrats, Rep. Bachmann!

So there we go for this year!  Maybe this will be an annual, or at least biennial, tradition…

GREETINGS, HOT AIR HEADLINES READERS:  Thanks for stopping by!  I’ll also direct you to the first two installments – for places 21-30, and 11-20.

Jobs plummet:

U.S. employment fell for the first this year in June as thousands of temporary census jobs ended and private hiring grew less than expected, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama who has identified job creation as a key priority.

Change!

Richard Daley, mayor of the most corrupt, crime-ridden city in the United States, a place where gangs roam freely, shooting and terrorizing at will, wants to defy the  spirit of the McDonald decision by ramming through gun laws marginally less intrusive than the Sullivan Act:

“As long as I’m mayor, we will never give up or give in to gun violence that continues to threaten every part of our nation, including Chicago,” said Daley, who was flanked by activists, city officials and the parents of a teenager whose son was shot and killed on a city bus while shielding a friend.

Oh, Daley.  Daley, you corrupt, authoritarian psycho.  Did you explain to the stage props with the murdered son that the people who killed their son don’t obey gun laws?

The ordinance, which Daley urged the City Council to pass, also would :

• Limit the number of handguns residents can register to one per month and prohibit residents from having more than one handgun in operating order at any given time.
• Require residents in homes with children to keep them in lock boxes or equipped with trigger locks.
• Require prospective gun owners to take a four-hour class and one-hour training at a gun range. They would have to leave the city for training because Chicago prohibits new gun ranges and limits the use of existing ranges to police officers. Those restrictions were similar to those in an ordinance passed in Washington, D.C., after the high court struck down its ban two years ago.
• Prohibit people from owning a gun if they were convicted of a violent crime, domestic violence or two or more convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Residents convicted of a gun offense would have to register with the police department.
• Calls for the police department to maintain a registry of every handgun owner in the city, with the names and addresses to be made available to police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders.

Those who already have handguns in the city — which has been illegal since the city’s ban was approved 28 years ago — would have 90 days to register those weapons, according to the proposed ordinance.

Residents convicted of violating the city’s ordinance can face a fine up to $5,000 and be locked up for as long as 90 days for a first offense and a fine of up to $10,000 and as long as six months behind bars for subsequent convictions.

Just goes to prove the old adage; “you can lead East Germans to the hole in The Wall, but you can’t make them go through”.

GREETINGS MERCURY RISING “Reader”/”s”:  “Phoenix Woman”  (has anyone ever noticed that her and Ken “Avidor” Weiner have never been seen in the same place?) apparently thinks that any reference to Bradlee Dean is not only a) a wholehearted endorsement of every minute facet of his worldview, and b) since I am a Republican, proof that Bradlee Dean really really double-dog is is is is is an honest-to-Pete “GOP insider”.

And “her” “point” is that Dean and the “You Can Run…” crew aren’t really “obliquely involved in politics”.  Which I wrote because, in 2010, they were pretty, well, obliquely involved in politics.  Sure, they did a political talk show; but unless “Phoenix” can show us some evidence that Brad and Jake actually particpate and are involved in some sort of party activity on a regular basis, “she” is really talking out her ass – or as we conservative bloggers put it, “Phoenixing”.

Further proof that

a) if logic were gasoline, “Phoenix Woman” couldn’t drive around the inside of a cheerio, and

b) if you read Mercury Rising, you’ve either had  a stroke, or are trying to give yourself one.

On to the actual article

——–

With the backmarkers out of the way, it’s time to recognize the middle of the pack – the Minnesota conservatives that are the eleventh through twentieth most-hated by Minnesota liberals.

Just as explanation, I weighted all votes by their position on the voters’ lists.  Thus a first-place vote got ten points, second-place nine points, and so on down to tenth place, for a point.   I also calculated a “passion index”, which is just a fancy way of saying the average points the subject got per vote; the higher the “passion index”, the more high-point votes the subject got.  Rankings are in descending order of point totals.

So without further ado, here we go!

20. King Banaian: My long-time NARN cohost, conservative economist and candidate for the Minnesota House in district 15B, Banaian squeaked onto the Top 20 with three votes and the second-lowest passion index in the group, barely ahead of Erik Paulsen.  I suspect he’ll do much better in the election this fall.

19. AM1280 The Patriot: The station that broadcasts such controversial fare as Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved – also the NARN – is hated by many for being a dissenter at all.

18. Taxpayers League of Minnesota: The group behind the “No New Taxes” pledge, the TPLoMN has been blamed for everything from the 35W bridge collapse to full wastebaskets in state offices. Tied for the highest passion index in the 11-20 group.

17. Bradlee Dean: Host of “Sons of Liberty”, minister at the controversial “You Can Run ButYou Can Not Hide” street ministry, and Andy Birkey’s constant stalkee, the regional leftymedia has turned Dean into a strawman representing all that is evil about Minnesota conservatism, notwithstanding the fact that he’s only tangentially involved in politics.

16. Scott Johnson: The Powerline blogger pummels lefty figures from Dan Rather all the way down to Nick Coleman without breaking a sweat.  Liberals hate that.

15. Rep. John Kline: He wins the Second District with the same kinds of margins Betty McCollum and Keith Ellison get in the Fourth and Fifth.  Unlike the dim McCollum and the always-frothing Ellison, Kline is a competent congressman.

14. Rep. Laura Brod: One voter commented “the left hates conservative women more than anything”, and Laura Brod has become one of the strongest figures in Minnesota conservatism – a “prairie Sarah Palin”, said one voter.  And that adds up to votes!  Youtube videos of her running verbal rings around DFLers in the house are a favorite among Minnesota conservatives.  Lefties hate fun.

13. John Hinderaker: My NARN cohost and Powerline contributor is widely, but mildly, detested; he got the most votes of anyone in the 11-20 group, but also drew the lowest passion index – lower than his blog partners Johnson and Mirengoff, lower even than Banaian or his NARN 1 co-host Brian Ward.  This is, however, a great base from which to improve for next year.

12. Phil Krinkie: Former “Doctor No” of the legislature and then head of the Taxpayers’ League, Krinkie has stood in the way of DFL spending, which is like getting in a Christian’s path to heaven, or a Packer fan’s access to beer – it’ll get people exercised.

11. Carol Molnau: Pawlenty’s lieutenant governor and former Transportation Commisioner, Molnau has been conservative and female – two words that act on liberals like holy water on vampires.

Tomorrow at noon – the Top Ten Minnesota Conservatives that Minnesota liberals hate!

Earlier this week, I took a poll – what Minnesota conservatives do Minnesota liberals hate the most? 

I collected responses via the comment section, my facebook page, and email – and got a pretty fair bunch of responses.  There were some surprises and at least a couple of foregone conclusions.

I’m going to publish 11-20 over the noon hour today, and 1 through 10 over noon tomorrow. 

But first, I’m going to give some recognitionto that mass of Minnesota conservatives that give Minnesota’s liberal establishment just a little to hate.  These are the people and institutions that got one vote each:

• The DFL – One wag apparently believes the left believes Minnesota’s dominant party is liberalism’s worst enemy.
• The Cans – No idea.
• All Minnesota Conservatives
• Mitch Pearlstein – Longtime head of the Center of the American Experiment
• Bill Cooper – Former MNGOP chair, CEO of TCF Bank, and pwner of Nick Coleman.
• Cosmo Insolocco – No idea.
• Mary Kiffmeyer – the former MN Secretary of State was a lightning rod for…ACORN.
• Freedom
• Pat Anderson – The former and future State Auditor
• Mac Hammond – The megaminister from Maple Grove
• Brian Sullivan – Tim Pawlenty’s convention opponent in 2002, and arguably the person we can thank for the conservatism of Pawlenty’s administration.
• Denny Hecker
• Conservative Bloggers – should be self-explanatory.
• Tony Sutton – The current chair of the Minnesota GOP
• Randy Kelly – Former Saint Paul DFL mayor who doomed his shot at a second term by endorsing George W. Bush in 2004.
• Regular Coffee
• Alan Quist – the first hardcore social conservative I can remember in Minnesota politics; endorsed for governor in 1990, he lost to Arne Carlson in the primary.
• Learned Foot – former Kool Aid Report blogger.
• Marty Seifert – Tom Emmer’s convention opponent and, now that he’s suddenly not running for office, a “reasonable, common-sense Republican” to all the DFLers that were calling him an extremist two months ago.
• Henry Ford
• Tom Pritchard – longtime chair of the Minnesota Family Council
• Kermit – blogger from Anti-Strib
• Rod Grams – former one-term Senator
• The Suburbs
• Captain America

Congratulations to everyone on the list that’s, er, human.

Now, the people with more than one vote, with their standings in the final poll:

30.  Katie Kieffer: The blogger, former college-press gadfly and up-and-coming pundit got two votes, including from one voter who added every conservative woman she could think of; “that’s who they really hate…”

29. Swiftee:  The of Bruce Springsteen of button-pushing, the Charlie Parker of chain-yanking, perhaps the most banned person among Twin Cities leftyblogs, the only surprise is that he didn’t come in in the top twenty.

28. Twila Brase:  Tireless healthcare crusader and my neighbor.

27. Entrepreneurs: Except when they can serve as ATMs for social spending, of course.

26. Joe Soucheray: Souch’s social curmudgeonism is often called “conservative”, and it was certainly something Minnesota liberals detested.

25. Tracy Eberly: Three years past the “Dirt-Worshipping Heathens” flap, Tracy still gets ’em frothing.

24. The Tea Partier: The “boogeyman” of the Minnesota left.

23. Paul Mirengoff: Not a Minnesotan, but when groupblogs got votes, I spread the votes among their contributors, and Powerline got two group votes.  Which is also why…

22.  Brian “Saint Paul” Ward got on the list as well.  My long-time NARN co-host scored two votes as  a member of the NARN.

21.  Rep. Erik Paulsen: With three votes, Paulsen is the only Republican in Minnestoa’s congressional delegation not to make the top twenty with a bullet.  As it were.

Top Twenty coming up at noon!

Robert Merrill – a veteran Marine officer who spent three years at Harvard Law –   leaps to Elena Kagan’s defense, at least in re

If Elena Kagan is “anti-military,” she certainly didn’t show it. She treated the veterans at Harvard like VIPs, and she was a fervent advocate of our veterans association. She was decidedly against “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but that never affected her treatment of those who had served. I am confident she is looking forward to the upcoming confirmation hearings as an opportunity to engage in some intellectual sparring with members of Congress over her Supreme Court nomination. I would respectfully warn them to do their homework, as she has a reputation for annihilating the unprepared.

In my opinion, Kagan’s positions never affected the services’ ability to recruit at Harvard. Behind the scenes, the dean ensured that our tiny HLS Veterans Association never lacked for funds or access to facilities. Recruiters simply could not use the school’s Office of Career Services. Does this demonstrate an “activist” streak, as some have proclaimed? I don’t think so. The school’s policy against discrimination was akin to black-letter law. If anything, Kagan was an activist in ensuring that military recruiters had viable access to students and facilities despite the official ban. A Boston-area recruiter later told me that the biggest hurdle he faced recruiting at Harvard Law was trying to answer the students’ strangely intellectual questions.

There may be a lot of reasons to keep Elena Kagan off the Supreme Court – she’s a preening elitist on a court already so full of Ivy Leaguers, she’s a not-so-closeted authoritarian, whatever.  Maybe hatred of the military isn’t one of them…

Bun’s “history” teacher was out most of the day today, but the substitute wasn’t much of an improvement.

The first order of business was watching a movie, Right America (Feeling Wronged), made by Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, about people who didn’t vote for Obama.   Calling the movie “heavy-handed” and “one-sided” would be a little like calling Nick Coleman “unctuous”; it focuses (like certain leftybloggers) on a thin film of outragous-to-the-point-of-cartoon-y racists:  even the  Huffington Post panned  it.

The teacher added after the movie that most people in the documentary were provincial “country folk” who had never seen a black person, and were motivated by racism.

The teacher handed out a “worksheet” on John Hanson – he was black, don’t you know? – and got a quiz on the other five “black” presidents and why they concealed their “blackness”.

And there was a “worksheet” – I’ll get that out over weekend.

As AP at Hot Air notes, Pam Gorman – who’s running for Congress in Arizona CD3, but first faces six other conservative Republicans in the primary – has upped the ante on “memorable” ads.

AP takes a whack at summing it all up:

The real question isn’t so much “is this what political advertising is about today?”

No.  It’s “what will an opponent have to come up with that’ll make a bigger impression than a 1928 Thompson?”

Suggestions solicited.