Pat Kessler is one of the small pack of “deans of Minnesota political journalism”.

And he’s done some good work during the campaign so far.

But his “Reality Check” piece yesterday deserves a look.

First, Immigration:

Tom Emmer, the Republican Candidate for Governor, said he supports Arizona’s tough new immigration crackdown. However, on Sunday, he toned down previous comments about how “wonderful” it is.

“What I said was … I was asked one question: ‘what do you think about the Arizona law?’ I said ‘it’s a good start when you talk about Arizona,'” said Emmer on WCCO Sunday Morning.

But, IN FACT, that’s not what he said.

On Minnesota Public Radio, Emmer described Arizona’s law as “wonderful,” said it does not target minorities and that it’s appropriate for police to ask for papers.

“I think what Arizona did is a wonderful first step,” said Emmer. “I’m very disappointed at the federal government.”

That’s the big “reality” check? Emmer went from a “Wonderful” start to a “Good” start?

So we’re parsing adjectives, here?  Is there some hidden difference in weight between “Good” and “Wonderful” starts?   Especially since both adjectives describe precisely the same approach?

Given how illegal immigration polls, I’d say either adjective works just fine with the voter.

Emmer was also noncommittal about whether he supports allowing Minnesota to opt out of federal laws, like President Obama’s new health care plan.

“You said I proposed that once,” he said. “What I have always proposed is that you gotta go based on the constitution.”

IN FACT, Emmer is a sponsor of a constitutional amendment to exempt Minnesota from all federal laws that are not enumerated in the Constitution. Under his plan, no law could go into effect unless two-thirds of the Minnesota legislature votes to approve it.

I wonder if Kessler is confused; rejecting federal laws not enumerated in the Constitution is the precise definition of “going back to the Constitution”.

The problem:  polling shows that Independence Ventura party candidate Tom Horner draws fifty percent more DFLers than Republicans, despite a months-long campaign to portray him as “the other Republican” to try to suck votes away from Tom Emmer.

You know the DFL is concerned.  Because Lori Sturdevant is on the case:

The Minnesota governor’s contest has two probusiness contenders — Republican Tom Emmer and the Independence Party’s Tom Horner.

That was the unanimous judgment of five Minnesota Chamber of Commerce audience members who lingered after last Tuesday’s three-way gubernatorial candidates’ debate to talk about what they’d heard.

The “unanimous” judgment; despite the fact that he wants to jack up sales taxes and a variety of other government excises, Horner is just dreamy.

Imagine that.

Oh, yeah:

The Republican candidate is singing the same smaller-government, lower-taxes tune that business lobbyists have been humming for years at the Capitol (though Emmer never seems to get past the chorus to any lyrics describing how he would downsize).

There are two and a half months go to, Lori.  I suspect he’ll squeeze it in there.

It’s not often that I praise the Twin Cities’ mainstream media.  Especially the two dailies, whom I would not trust to cover Republican electoral campaigns fairly and honestly (as institutions, not necessarily in terms of each and every reporter) if offered them a billion dollars.

But when they’re right – when they actual do the gumshoe reporting on issues that their institutional biases allow them to be fair and honest about – sometimes they truly do God’s work.

As in the Koua Fong Lee case, as recapped by columnist Ruben Rosario (via  Bob Johnson’s ADemocracy).

Rosario:

Justice prevails, no thanks to ineffective defense counsel and obstinate county prosecutors.

A defense attorney’s mission is to advocate as best he or she can for the client. A prosecutor’s ultimate mission is to seek justice. Both failed miserably in this sad case.

Lee was the driver of a Toyota involved in a horrendous crash in the summer of 2006, in Saint Paul.  I remember driving by the crash scene, on Snelling at I94, as I ran errands that evening; it was one of the worst accident scenes I’ve ever seen.

In hindsight, the first big mistake was to prosecute this case as a felony…there was no evidence at all that this man, returning from church services with his pregnant wife and their 4-year-old daughter, intended to crash at high speed into another vehicle. He was not drunk or high or text-messaging or dozing off or otherwise distracted.

Yet, for argument’s sake, even if we grant that he wrongly stepped on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake, it is still not a felony. No matter. He was charged with multiple counts of criminal vehicular homicide, gross negligence. He was prosecuted and convicted as a criminal and sentenced to an eight-year state prison term.

The problem, as Rosario – recapping a story that was covered in Pulitzer-worthy depth (and by that I mean Pulitzers as they once were, rather than as they are today) by PiPress reporter Jackie Gurnon – was the lawyers; Lee’s “defense” attorney…:

That conviction was secured in no small part with the head-scratching support of a defense lawyer who contradicted his client’s testimony that he stepped and kept his foot on the brake right through the fatal impact.

In fact, this lawyer embraced a key prosecution witness’s gas-pedal theory during closing arguments and never aggressively pursued alternative theories that may have supported what his client was saying about what happened. Who needs prosecutors with a lawyer like that?

…and, most chillingly, the Ramsey County Attorney’s office; even as reports of unintended uncontrollable accellerations in Toyotas multiplied:

…Gaertner and her office not only opposed a new trial, but also brought in “experts” who pooh-poohed new findings that seemed quite obvious. One of the most glaring prosecutorial missteps in all of this was pushing the theory that Lee did not step on the brake because there was a lack of long skid marks at the accident scene.

Of course, the new evidence underlined that Lee’s car had anti-lock brakes, which don’t leave skid marks when applied.

That’s something that should have easily been checked, regardless of the subsequent Toyota recall. But neither the defense nor the prosecution bothered to check this most momentous fact during the trial.

Read the whole thing – and no, I haven’t excerpted anywhere near the whole fascinating story.

It’s good to know there are still reporters that can still do some good in this world.

It’s chilling to realize that Susan Gaertner – the Ramco attorney – has higher political aspirations.

It was Friday, August 24, 1990.

Payday.

I was still working for the sleazy DJ service.

You heard that right.  In the fifteen months since my last update to this series, nothing much had changed.  I was still spinning records in bars.

And my ritual every other Friday was always the same; drive from my place in Northeast Minneapolis to Sleazy DJ Company’s headquarters in Eden Prairie.  Aim to get there around 2PM, when the checks might occasionally arrive.  Wait around with the rest of the guys – usually five or six of us would be gathered in the office, waiting.

This we did because the spiky haired boss never put the checks in the mail on time.  They’d ride around in his car for days, eventually getting popped in the mail over the weekend sometime, sometimes arriving at our places by mail a week after payday, postmarked the Monday or Tuesday following payday.

So those of us who didn’t have day jobs would trek out to Eden Prairie and wait.

And wait.

And when the waiting got oppressive, we’d grab bags of rubber bands and have epic rubber band fights around the office.  I had the “sniper” thing figured out, scoring solid hits all the way down the office’s smudgy hallway.

There were some payday regulars:  Scott, the former radio guy and assistant manager; Robbie, a pudgy white guy who looked a little like David Johannson but tried to sound like Flavor Flav,  and was mortified when we found out that his mother ran a temp  service in Edina for which he eventually wound up working as office manager; Ryan, a nerdy guy who resembled Alan Ruck from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and who was planning on going to aviation school in North Dakota; Jeff, a movie-star handsome guy with a wrenchingly cute blond girlfriend who was seen without him only at these Friday paycheck stakeouts, whose stated goal was to become an Army helicopter pilot;  Kevin, a tall, skinny guy whose claims to fame were being an incredibly talented beatmixer and having a knack and preference for picking up the biggest, most obese women in any bar he worked.

And Spiky-Haired Boss usually came dragging in between 4:30 and 5 with the checks.  Just like every payday.

But I kept showing up at 2.

I had Fridays off; being the #1 jock in the place, I had the pull to get a prime weekend night off.  Fridays, I usually went to “Little Tin Soldier” to play, depending on the weekend, either “Clear for Action” (or some other naval wargame) or “Twilight 2000”.

And this night was going to be no exception.

It was a Friday pretty much like any other over the previous three years.

Not much to recommend it, really.

(more…)

The DEA is looking for Ebonics linguists

According to one posting, the linguist’s duties would include “monitoring varying numbers of communications intercepts during any given shift” and then providing “reliable and accurate transcriptions.”

I heard a morning radio guy scoffing about this.  “It’s not a language!”.

Having taken the class, I can tell you the definition of “another language”.  To wit:

If you can’t understand it, it’s a foreign language.

Oh, technically it might be “cant” or “argot” – secret languages or agglomerations of jargon designed to keep outsiders out and insiders in the loop, like “thieves cant” or Cockney argot.  It might even be “dialect”, a regional or social variation of a language that might be impenetrable to the rest of the language’s speakers (like Schwäbisch is to Germans or highland Scots, or Cajun are to many English speakers).

Still – if people are talking, and you can’t understand them, and understanding them is important, then it’s a language.

But here’s where this is going to turn into a problem:

An agency official, said there is nothing “racial” about the job, and described white rapper Eminem as “one of the best speakers of Ebonics there ever was.”

And so it will be considered a racial thing. and officialdom will crack down on it.

Gary Gross at LFR sent me a copy of NRO’s Jim Geraghty’s list of 13 potential November upsets.

And coming in at #11:

11. Theresa Collett vs. Betty McCollum, Minnesota’s 4th District.

Reasons the challenger should have no chance: This is a D+13 district; McCollum won it in 2008 by 37 percentage points.

Reasons the challenger has a chance: Upon winning the primary, Collett, a University of St. Thomas law professor,challenged McCollum to four debates. She’s still waiting for a reply. On the stump, Collett makes her points in a crisp, clear, direct style. Outgoing governor Tim Pawlenty is giving Collett some help. Collett is severely underfunded, but McCollum has only $160,634 in cash on hand as of July 21, which is fairly low for an incumbent.

This is the first I’ve seen anyone think of MNCD4 a potential upset…ever.

I remain to be completely convinced.  Oh, in a just world Teresa Collett – a blindly-articulate, fiercely-intelligent con-law professor, would mop the floor with McCollum, a woman often distracted by shiny objects, and about whose speaking style it is said that she could read the phone book from the well of the House, if only because it sounds like she already is, and who is serving her fourth term on the strength of being endorsed by the DFL in a district that would have sent Richard Hung  to Washington if he’d come up with the endorsement.

Is this year going to be that different?  I’ll cross my fingers and whisper “from Geraghty’s lips to God’s ear”.

After I wrote my piece on Friday – the left and media’s current chant about “investors targeting Target”, which showed that the three firms that the Strib was crowing about amount to .0015, or fifteen ten-thousandths, of Target’s market capitalization – I wondered; how do the various “Socially Responsible Investment” (SRI) firms stack up against a company like Target?  Which, let us not forget, is Minnesota’s second-largest corporate donor to charity and one of the most PC-friendly companies in the business, but can afford to be, because they kick market ass?

I figured it’d be interesting to compare Target’s market performance to that of the three SRI funds mentioned in the Strib piece.

But I can only do two.  Because try as I may, I can’t find a ticker symbol for Trillium.

Here’s the comparative performance so far this year.  Target (TGT) is blue, Walden (WSEFX) red, Calvert (CAAAX) yellow:

Walden’s about even on this dismal year; Calvert is off about four (after being down nearly ten a month ago). Target is up a couple, after being up fifteen this spring, before the consumer confidence numbers tanked much of the retail market (which the press also spun as anti-Emmer news!)

So – so far in 2010, both of the SRI funds are dogs, and Target is at least holding its own.  Indeed, the earnings of all three firms seem to follow a similar curve – with the SRIs just a point or two below Target.

So how about over the past couple of years?

Wow.  That’s pretty amazing.  Since the beginning of 2008, when the recession really sank in, all three companies took a dive…after Obama’s election.  All three dropped by 40-50%.  Target is back up 5% over the period; Walden and Calvert are both 20-30% off.

Seems like Target stock – with or without contributions to MNForward – may be the only solid performer in Walden or Calvert’s portfolios.

Whose advice are you going to take?

The Obama Administration is h objecting to the re-importation of World War II-vintage rifles lent to South Korea in the fifties and sixties.

According to The Korea Times, the Obama administration has blocked efforts by the South Korean government to sell over a hundred thousand surplus M1 Garand and Carbine rifles into the United States market. These self-loading rifles were  introduced in 1926 [sic – it was 1936] and 1941…Along with AR-15 type rifles, the M1 rifles are the quintessential firearms of responsible citizenship, precisely the type of firearms which civic responsibility organizations such as the Appleseed Project teach people how to use.

The M1 Garand was the rifle that won World War II for the US.

M1 Garand (click to expand)

Big, beefy, weighing in at ten pounds when loaded with an eight-shot bloc clip of 30.06, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you take out to rob a liquor store.

The Carbine – which is also called “M1”, but is completely different?:

The Carbine

It’s a light little thing, issued to sergeants, officers vehicle crews and behind-the-lines guys who weren’t expected to do much shooting but needed something more intimidating than a pistol in case they did need to get out of a jam.  It round was a little less powerful than a .357 Magnum – but the longer barrel makes it a little more accurate.

They’re sixty years old.

According to a South Korean official, “The U.S. insisted that imports of the aging rifles could cause problems such as firearm accidents.

I”m going to suggest that the market for these rifles is the least accident-prone one anywhere.

It was also worried the weapons could be smuggled to terrorists, gangs or other people with bad intentions.”

I sat and chewed on that for a while.  Mexican drug gangs with access to all the modern AK47s and G3s  their bottomless coffers of money can buy – thirty and twenty round fully-automatic rifles – would trade up for bigger, heavier, less-concealable eight or fifteen round semi-automatic rifles?

President Obama was elected on the promise that he supported individual Second Amendment rights. His administration’s thwarting of the import of these American-made rifles is not consistent with that promise.

While in the Rob Port show on AM1100 The Flag in Fargo,  We discussed the Freedom Foundation’s story about Minnesota cities and counties’ lobbying budgets, as well as the Strib’s non-story story about Target’s “nervous investors”.

Make no mistake about it – killing a human being, even in self-defense, is a tragedy.

In the case of homicide justified in self-defense, it’s the second-worst tragedy there is.

The Hennepin County Attorney has h declined to prosecute Christopher Lamotte – a bouncer at Grumpy’s Bar, in Northeast Minneapolis – for the shooting of Tirso Gomez.  Gomez allegedly attacked the bouncer with a knife after a closing-time altercation outside the bar:

Minneapolis police asked that no charges be filed, as investigators thought it was a justified killing. Prosecutors agreed, telling FOX 9’s Paul Blume on Friday it was “a valid claim of self defense.”

The Hennepin County attorney’s office said bouncers are not afforded any special privileges in their role as security enforcers at bars and clubs. The right to have a weapon on site is up to individual management and ownership. There was no sign on the door at Grumpy’s banning guns.

I wonder if a bouncer in Saint Paul could expect the same sort of justice.

Ahem:

The politicians say “we” can’t afford a tax cut.  Maybe we can’t afford the politicians.  ~Steve Forbes

There’s a reason I supported him in 2000…

The other day “Spotty” from Lucky Drool read my piece pointing out his “logical inconsistency” last week.  His face blanched, and then went beet-red.  He jumped to his feet,  swept the dishes off the table into a heap on the ground, walked outdoors and howled at the moon like a wolf with heartburn, stomped his feet, fell to the sidewalk and beat the ground with his fists, all the while loudly but un-fluently cursing his miserable fate.  He got up and walked with an ape-like slouch into his house, looking for sharp objects (which, fortunately, Aaron “I’m not Landry” Klemz had removed), smashed some bottles on the floor, and bellowed incoherently at the top of his lungs until he passed out.  The paramedics gave him oxygen and suggested he change his underwear.

No, I don’t know he did any of this.  But I figured since virtually every leftyblogger in town states “disagreement” has some sort of angry outburst – “Joe Tucci had a meltdown over…” or “Tracy Eberly got his undies in a knot over…” or…:

Mitch Berg got the vapors.

…or some other variant on “so and so is a poopyhead”.

There must be something to it.  Maybe it’s a leftyblogger’s idea of fun?

I’m not feeling it.  Maybe it takes practice.

Oh, “Spot”‘s point?  Er…

…I dunno.  Being a leftyblogger, it’s some variation on “my ends justify my means”, but it gets hard to tell after a while…

Oh, yeah!   He was reacting to – er, “having a whining melted-down cow over” – my piece from last week:

Mitch’s lament is that I made people look foolish at the Tea Party rally at the Minnesota Capitol on April 15, 2010

There was no lamentation.  Merely reporting.  “Spot” was claiming GOP trackers were rude and intimidated people.  I pointed out that if that was “intimidation” – a 98 pound girl with a flipcam who didn’t even fit into the same frame as Dayton – then DFL voters are indeed pansies, and if the security people and the spectators I spoke with at the Tea Party are correct, Spot’s probably not the one to be complaining.

It’s really that simple.

Quit sobbing, Spot.  That gnashing is going to hurt your teeth. And f9r crying out loud, blow your effing nose.

(Nope. Still not seeing the fun.  Guess there was a reason I ignored Truck School so long).

Holly Dunn is 53 today.

“Holly Who?”

Siddown.

Back in the mid-eighties, country-western was trying to shake off the last of the detritus of its dismal “crossover” era – the wretched stretch starting in the mid-seventies when Nashville became obsessed with trying to conquer the Top Forty pop charts.  It led to much of the worst, most banal, formless, most pre-processed country ever, bilge like Eddie Rabbit and Barbara Mandrell and such.

Into this vapid desert came a few performers who stubbornly stuck to the country’s traditional forms; Emmylou Harris, George Strait, Ricky Skaggs…

…and Holly Dunn.  Dunn – a San Antonio native and preacher’s daughter.

It was still a few years before the likes of Garth Brooks would yank mainstream country back to its roots.   In that interim, Dunn was a glorious little burst of unabashed honky-tonk twang.

Anything Gretchen Wilson does today, Dunn did twenty-odd years ago.

Dunn retired from music in 2003; she lives in the Southwest and works as an artist.

Anyway – happy birthday!

Adam Thierer and I talked about “Free Press” and “Net Neutrality”- here’s my piece from earlier in the week.

Vettes for Vets:  $15 admission at the Savage American Legion:  12375 Princeton in Savage.  Active Duty, Reserve, Guard or Retired military get in free.

VOICES of Conservative Women; contact them here.  They need to get about $6,000 more by by the end of August.  Please help out!  First $100 donation gets a  signed copy of Laura Ingraham’s Obama Diaries: first $250 gets a signed copy of Going Rogue.

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

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is off on assignment.  I’ll be up from 1-3PM Central.  e We’ll be talking with Adam Thierer of the Center for Digital Media Freedom about the fraud of “Net Neutrality”.  Also Pat Roberts, a woman who flew airplanes in World War II, and our annual special for “‘vettes for Vets” at the Savage VFW.  Plus Jen DeJournett on “Voices of Conservative Women”.  Plus the media’s ongoing fraud in this election.
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

James Lileks gave me a shout-out on the podcast (around :45 or so) the other day.   He was kind enough to say my blog was the place to go for info on the Minnesota Gubernatorial race and the exceedingly slimy campaign the DFL and the Daytons have run against Tom Emmer and, of course, Target.

Info here on Target’s donations to charities and its commitment to charity and “social progress“.

Tracing the funding behind the group driving all the anti-Emmer, anti-business, anti-Target astroturf.

James’ reference to the “stage managed video” of the “nonpolitical” woman cutting up her Target card; the woman happened to be a long-time liberal activist.  Here’s a list of other Minnesota companies donating to “MNForward“, a pro-business group.

James’ reference to the specious connection to the “extremist” group explained here.

The local media is straining to show that Target’s stock price is falling due to the crisis (if it is, then so is every single mid-level retailer), and how capital investment firms are urging Target to quit donating to conservatives (unmentioned: the firms have negligible holdings in Target, and the “firms” are all politically motivated).

It was in all the headlines today:  “Target feeling investor backlash”, screamed the Strib.

Emphasis added:

The backlash from gay-rights supporters against Target Corp.’s recent political donation now includes some institutional shareholders.

Three management firms that collectively hold $57.5 million of Target stock — Walden Asset Management, Calvert Asset Management and Trillium Asset Management — filed a proposal asking Target’s independent board members to undertake a “comprehensive review of Target’s political contributions and spending processes including the criteria used for such contributions,” according to a statement released Thursday night

Sounds pretty serious, huh?

There are two problems with this “story”:

Small Potatoes:  57.5 million dollars in Target stock equals about 0.0015 of Target Corp’s $38,190,000,000 (that’s thirty eight billion dollar and change) market capitalization; fifteen dollars out of every ten thousand worth of Target market capitalization.

That’s like taking fifteen cents out of a hundred dollars.

The amount of Target Corp stock owned by the three firms named in the story would have to move the decimal point a couple notches to even qualify as “pissing in the wind”.

This is not a serious challenge to Target.

But the Star Tribune didn’t figure the Minnesota voter needed to know that.

Who Are Those “Investment Firms”? The Star Tribune, and the rest of the media covering this story, don’t feel it important to elaborate on who the three “institutional shareholders” involved in this “resolution” are.

All three are firms involved in “socially responsible investing”.  Walden is one of a group of investment companies demanding that President Obama create an office of Corporate Social Resopnsibility.

The purpose of the office would be to enhance and coordinate corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities across the government, at home and abroad, and to pursue policies and initiatives to strengthen the CSR commitments of the private sector.

A joint letter from the groups, released today, was organized by the 500-member Social Investment Forum (SIF), the U.S. membership association for socially and environmentally responsible investment professionals and institutions.

Calvert Asset Management also pursues left-friendly policies.

The organizations are asking the SEC to require companies to report annually on sustainability indicators in accordance with the most up-to-date reporting framework of the Global Reporting Initiative and on other material ESG matters as they come to light.

In a letter to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro that accompanied the proposal, the investors said: “The present global economic crisis has made it readily apparent that our existing system for corporate reporting has failed shareholders. We believe that robust sustainability reporting could have mitigated some of the impacts of the financial crisis. These types of disclosures would have promoted longer-term thinking by investors and corporations, and earlier detection of predatory lending and other destructive business practices. There is a tremendous opportunity to learn from these gaps and to construct a system of safeguards to protect investors. We are confident that mandatory sustainability reporting will contribute significantly to rebuilding public trust in corporations as well as the agencies regulating them in the wake of the present crisis.”

Trillium?  Yep – they’re an investment house that focuses on “Environtmental, Social and Governmental” “investment” – a “movement” focused on bypassing politics to affect policy by jiggering the capital market.

Their performance in the market is a matter of debate, perhaps.

But it’s not debateable that these three investment firms are not random firms purely focused on the non-political, fiduciary interests of the shareholder.  And it’s not up for debate that the three companies all together aren’t even a vaporous fraction of Target’s total worth.

So why does the Strib feel the need to omit all this from their coverage?

Misreporting and incomplete reporting is a pattern.  Two weeks ago, I busted the Saint Paul Pioneer Press claiming that Target’s share values were hurt by the controversy, on a week when the entire mid-to-high-level consumer retail market suffered a setback due to eroding consumer confidence numbers.

Now, this.

Is the Twin Cities’ business press also in the bag for Mark Dayton?  What does this say about the rest of their “journalism?”

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring notes that the Strib is participating in the effort to whitewash Mark Dayton’s record; an op-ed  by one Alison Rosholt tries to slip the reader dog poo and call it brownies in trying to sanitize Dayton’s most infamous crackup, the closing of his Senate office in 2005.

Gary exhumes some commentary from the time of the crackup (go to Gary’s piece and read it all), and  responds:

Ms. Rosholt’s account simply isn’t credible. Certainly, DHS would’ve contacted DC’s mayor had they discovered a credible, specific terrorist plot targeting Capitol Hill. The fact that Mayor Williams, a fellow Democrat, ridiculed Sen. Dayton by saying he wasn’t sure “what frequency the senator’s on” speaks volumes to Sen. Dayton’s sensibilities, or rather, his lack thereof.

It’s worse than that.

It’s an attempt by the regional left and media (pardon the redundancy) to feed the inconvenient bits and pieces of Dayton’s record down the memory hole; to convince average Minnesotans – the ones that were dumb enough to elect Al Franken, anyway – that Dayton “really wasn’t all that bad”.

During the campaign, two of the lefty memes that irritated me the most were “Obama’s smart“, and “Obama was an Ivy Leaguer” and, its close cousin, “Obama was a constitutional law professor”.

None of them is especially a qualifier for the office of President.

The “ConLaw professor” is the easiest disposed of; the President will never need to litigate the Constitution; he or she only needs to understand it.  Indeed, all the ideal president really needs to know about the Constitution is how to follow it.  Any good policeman or modestly-bright college graduate knows more than enough about the Constitution to be President.  And the President who thinks they can outfox the Founding Fathers is especially dangerous.

The Ivy Leaguer bit is a little harder – but I think it’s getting to the point where going to an Ivy League school should be a disqualifier for the Presidency; indeed, maybe we should trade the whole “natural-born US citizen” requirement to drop in that restriction.  I dunno.

But the fact is, the very best thing an Ivy League education, in and of itself, says about someone is that between the ages of 14 and 22 or so, that person understood how the paper chase was played well enough to earn spectacular grades and punch all the other Admissions Committee-friendly tickets and earn the scholarships it takes to afford to attend an Ivy.  In vastly more cases, it means that they come from families that both impressed upon the young ‘uns the need to have that upmarket diploma (and its most important fringe benefit, access to the upmarket alumni network), and the means to make it happen.  After about age 23, the best question for an Ivy grad is “what have you done for us lately?; too many wave their diploma around in their mid-thirties like Andy Bernard in The Office and his years at Cornell; they remind me of high school quarterbacks whose lives peaked at the homecoming game their senior year, and never quite got that good again.

And of course, while several great or at least decent presidents have gone to Ivy League schools, our best have been self-educated (Lincoln) or come from obscure midwestern schools (Reagan, who attended Eureka) and have had to earn their way through life on merit, rather than alumni connections.

But the “he’s smart” bit is the one that strikes me, ironically, as the dumbest “qualification”.

Doy.

Betty McCollum notwithstanding, it’s hard for anyone to get anywhere in public life without being “smart” in some sense of the term or another, whether it’s Thomas Jefferson’s world-altering intellect or Lyndon Johnson’s brutal political “street smarts”.

But the least useful, it’d seem, is the bookish, “Lookit me, I’m an Ivy Leaguer and you’re not!”, air of unearned condescension that you get from the overpraised, the overweening, and…

…the President:

To be blunt, Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so “every economist” believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations’ fundamental interests (the Middle East). Is he as well read as George W. Bush? As intellectually creative as Bill Clinton? As grounded in history as Harry Truman? Let’s get some perspective here.

It’s a deadly combination — intellectual arrogance and lack of sympatico with the public — that leads him again and again to stumble. And when his shortcomings lead to embarrassment or failure, he strikes out in frustration — at Israel, at the media, and at the American people. The image of himself clashes with the results he achieves and the reaction he inspires. No wonder he’s so prickly. You’d be, too, if everyone your entire life had told you that you were swell but now, when the chips are down and the spotlight is on, you are failing so badly in your job.

That, indeed, may be Obama’s great legacy;  that “The Peter Principle” may soon be called “The Obama Principle”.

I am hosting a debate in five minutes.

I’m calling Mark Dayton’s office to invite him.

HAH! He declined!

What is he hiding?

Nothing, of course; I threw a debate with five minutes’ warning, on a day when Mr. Dayton is likely out preening for his donors campaigning somewhere.

Pretty stupid, huh?

Not much different than the tempest in a Kombucha-bottle the local Sorosphere ginned up over yesterday’s “Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities” “debate” in Winona.

“Why does Emmer hate ‘Greater Minnesota'”, chanted any number of leftyblogs earlier in the week.

A source close to the campaign scoffed at their mock victorian vapours.  “We told them we had a prior conflict”, he said.  The fundraiser has been on the calendar for quite some time, and “since we’re not funded by independent expenditures, we have to raise the money”.

Which doesn’t prevent the Strib and the sorosphere’s chatbots from acting like the absence was a suprise.

Just like they did at the “Green Issue Forum” debate the day after the GOP conventi0n last May.  Even though Emmer had declined the invitation out of hand – it concided with his youngest son’s first communion – the leftymedia and Strib (ptr) feigned Captain Reneault-like shock, shock that Emmer didn’t make it to the debate.

Like Emmer’s “absences”, the “DWI convictions” and the “push to lower DWI penalties”, it’s not just a lie; it’s a Big Lie, an out-of-context factoid that the DFL and media (ptr) is repeating endlessly for the benefit of those too incurious to dig beneath the headlines, but whose vote counts the same as yours anyway.

More next week.

Much more.

Chanting Points Memo: The Green Issues Forum

Writing over at Culpable Stew, Aaron Klemz read my piece earlier this week, and flew into a violent, petulant rage, throwing things and losing control of his bodily functions and making bystanders wonder if he had some serious medical condition.

(I figured I’d shut down the left’s “so and so had a cow…” “argument” once and for all).

Anyway, Klemz thinks he’s got me (and Gary Gross) on my “cop-killer bullet” story from earlier this week – the bill written by Ted Kennedy that would have given the Attorney General the power to determine which bullets were “cop-killer” bullets.   The bill got shredded, losing by about a 2:1 margin.

Klemz’ rationale?  The language protects us!

But here’s the thing, in both Gross’ piece and Berg’s attempt to pile on, they love to cite legislative language except for the section which mandates exactlyhow the Attorney General will determine which ammunition is armor piercing (that would be section 926(d)):

Enh. I saw it. It didn’t change anything.  But here it is, with emphasis added:

(b) DETERMINATION OF THE CAPABILITY OF PROJECTILES TO PENETRATE BODY ARMOR–Section 926 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:“(d)(1) Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this subsection, the Attorney General shall promulgate standards for the uniform testing of projectiles against Body Armor Exemplar.

“(2) The standards promulgated under paragraph (1) shall take into account, among other factors, variations in performance that are related to the length of the barrel of the handgun or center-fire rifle from which the projectile is fired and the amount and kind of powder used to propel the projectile.

“(3) As used in paragraph (1), the term `Body Armor Exemplar’ means body armor that the Attorney General determines meets minimum standards for the protection of law enforcement officers.”

Back to Klemz:

Oh, you mean they’ll actually have to do objective tests? And that these standards, like all regulatory determinations, will be subject to oversight from the courts? And you mean that this determination is made in comparison to “standard ammunition?” Oh, and you mean that not only does the ammo have to be actually armor piercing according to objective tests, it has to be also “designed and marketed as having armor piercing capability?” That’s some “stroke of a pen.”

And this amendment failed nearly 2 to 1?

Yeah.  Proof that Congress isn’t always stupid.

There are two ways to look at any piece of legislative language; from the perspective of one who takes government language at face value and trusts government to act on the intent spun for legislators, and from that of someone who actually pays attention to history.

Liberal Attorneys General and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (and now Explosives!) that report to them have a shameful record of manipulating gun control laws to maximize their control and the number of otherwise law-abiding gun owners they can prosecute under some grounds or another.

So if you are a liberal who looks at phrases like “shall promulgate standards for the uniform testing of projectiles” and says “Look! Standards!  In writing!”, then you are ignorant of the BATFE’s history.  During the Clinton Administration, the BATFE took the “standards” for importing firearms set under the 1994 “Crime Bill” and perverted them into a byzantine maze that seemed to be designed to entrap people who tried to be law abiding gun owners, but didn’t make a hobby of reading federal non-legislative regulation.  The “standards” observed during the “assault weapon ban” were…well, non-standard.  They made no sense.  Full-powered battle rifles like the HK91 would be allowed if they had a “thumbhole” sporting stock, while the less-powerful SKS would be banned because…it had a folding bayonet?  The rules were kept intentionally vague, and changed often, largely (it was believed) to entrap more law-abiding citizens – because it was almost impossible to stay ahead of the BATFE and the Attorney General’s “standards”.

And the “armor-piercing bullet” “standard” is, if anything, even more prone to abuse; your 30.06 hardball that you take deer hunting might be armor-piercing (because it’ll definitely shred most body armor), or it might not (because it’s pretty conventional), or it might be above certain loadings and muzzle velocities, or it might be any of the above depending on the “standards” the AG sets and – most importantly – the way the BATFE interprets the “standards”.

The bill lost 2-1 not because Republicans hate cops (as Klemz slanderously hints), but because of the record of the BATFE and, by extension, the federal government and setting standards like this.

(Klemz, with typical sorosblogger subtlety, entitles his “article” “Defending Cop Killer bullets, because that’s what they do”.  Well, no.  Unlike the Dems, the GOP has always proposed the laws that actually protect cops, and the rest of us too.  Of course, while Dems like Dayton are at the moment running away from their gun-control history, once you get them into places where they have complete control, like Chicago, we see the real truth; Liberals really hate  cops or black children).

(Isn’t the “disagreeing with me is a symptom of hatred” thing just a hoot?)

Congrats to the Flash family; Nick has graduated from USAF Basic Training at Lackland AFB in Texas:

I’ve known Nick since he was four or five or so.  He’s off to learn how to run drones.

To:  Madames and Sirs

From:  Mitch

Re: Huge Mistake

To whom it may concern,

Get  “Mike’s Hard Limeade” back on your shelves immediately or face the consequences.

That is all.

Mitch Berg

There’s going to be a public hearing on “saving the Internet” tonight.  It’ll be at the auditorium at South High (3131 19th Avenue South in Minneapolis).

No, that’s really what they’re calling it; here’s the email:

From: Josh Silver, FreePress.net [mailto:info@freepress.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 11:01 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: Why you should join me and Al Franken on Thursday

Dear Friend,

I know you’re busy, but I can’t tell you how important it is that you join me and Sen. Al Franken [tonight]at South High School in Minneapolis (yes, Sen. Franken is coming!)

My warnings are no longer speculation. Google, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are about to turn the Internet into cable TV — where their favored websites and content will move fast, and everyone else will be left without a voice. It’s time for all of us to stand up or get rolled.

President Obama has said that protecting the open Internet was a top priority. But the FCC chairman remains silent. And too many in Congress have been bought by the phone and cable companies.

Our last line of defense is you. We need more than 400 people to show up on Thursday night. If we don’t tell Sen. Franken and Commissioners Copps and Clyburn (both will be there) that people like you are outraged about a corporate takeover of the Internet, we will lose. It’s that simple.

Please come with a friend or two to South High School Thursday night. The event begins at 6 p.m. You can go here to RSVP and learn more.

If you have something to say, we’ll make certain you have time at the microphone. We need to hear you. The commissioners need to hear you.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Josh Silver

President & CEO

Free Press

www.freepress.net

www.SavetheInternet.com

P.S. For more on Thursday’s hearing, read today’s great MinnPost editorial by our allies at the Center for Media Justice and New America Foundation.

Wow.  That sounds important.

Rumors are bopping around that Secretary of State Ritchie is also  going to attend, although there’s some back-and-forth over whether the Senator Franken is supposed to be in town or not.  The group putting on the event, “Free Press“, would seem to need some star power to draw people and attention to the event; last night’s Meet Emmer” event drew more people than either of the two previous attempts.

Negligible as this event seems, though, it’s important for conservatives to try to turn out (I have a prior engagement, unfortunately).  Copps and Clyburn are both activists on the FCC, who are completely on board with Obama’s push to create a kinder, gentler, tamer (for Democrats) media landscape.

“Oh, you’re just being paranoid, Berg”.

Not if you dig into the pedigree of “Free Press”.  Behind the innocuous name is an organization with big, intrusive plans for even more “hope and change” in American society.  Their board is a who’s who of behind-the-scenes media utopians – Josh Silver, Robert McChesney, people from The Nation and the Norman Lear Foundation.

And their track record?

They don’t like capitalism or the free market very much:

“There is no real answer [to the U.S. economic crisis] but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.” (Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster, “A New New Deal under Obama?,” Monthly Review, 2/2009)

But that doesn’t mean that “Free Press” is about nationalizing the Internet, does it?

Josh Silver on the case for nationalizing the internet:

“The agency needs to shut out the noise machine and do what it must to fulfill its mandate to ‘serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.’ Any other course would be disastrous…. The United States is falling further behind our global competitors in high-speed Internet adoption, speed and price. The birthplace of the Internet now ranks at No. 22 globally in broadband speed and access, in part because the government lets the phone and cable companies dictate telecommunications policy.” (Josh Silver, “Viewpoints: Broadband rules are crucial to expand access and protect users,” Sacramento Bee, 7/18/10)

Ben Scott on the same subject:’

“Increasingly the Internet is no longer a commercial service, its an infrastructure…What we’re witnessing at the FCC now is the logical next step which is we are going to create a regulatory framework for the Internet which recognizes it is an infrastructure now and not a commercial service.” (Ben Scott, C-SPAN: The Communicators, , 9/25/09)

“Infrastructure”.  Like the Interstate system.  Or public toilets.

No, really:

“We have to stop thinking of media as a business pure and simple…The way we should understand journalism is as a public good.” (Robert McChesney, “Journalism should be subsidized by government, professor says,” 2/2/10)

I mean, it’s not that they mind free speech.  Just the right kind of free speech.  McChesney:

“To the extent commercial activities are given First Amendment protection, it makes the rule of capital increasingly off-limits to political debate and government regulation…In my view, progressives need to stake out a democratic interpretation of the First Amendment and do direct battle with the Orwellian implications of the ACLU’s commercialized First Amendment.” (Robert McChesney, “The New Theology of the First Amendment,” Monthly Review, 3/1998)

In fact, “Free Speech’s” McChesney wants the government to pay for more of the right kind of speech:

“When you look at our founders, they did not only condone government subsidies of journalism, they demanded it.” (Robert McChesney, “Journalism should be subsidized by government, professor says,” 2/2/10)

No, not being paranoid:  the government.  With taxpayer dollars!:

$200 Tax Credit Proposal for Newspapers in Free Press Report: “McChesney and Nichols have drawn from this proposal to advocate that taxpayers receive $200 in annual tax credits to spend on daily newspapers, as long as the newspapers publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial news hole of at least 24 broad pages each day with less than 50 percent advertising.148 Another proposal would allow people to write off their subscriptions to newspapers and magazines as a tax deduction, as they do with their college tuition.” (Victor Pickard, Josh Stearns and Craig Aaron, “Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy,” Free Press, p. 36)

Because “the market” is allowing dissenting opinions waaaaay too much sway:

“The ultimate irony of Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh is that they couch in populist rhetoric a message that, in its very essence, is anti-populist – designed to protect the swindle at the core of our media system’s failure. And that is why the media’s old guard is targeting the idea that this system needs to change.” (Tim Karr, “What Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh are really afraid of,” Huffington Post,9/16/09)

…and those dissenters have not only scary opinions, but sometimes (says Josh Silver) disrupt the chosen and preferred narrative!:

“Fox News continues to amaze us and propagandize many, labeling as fringe-left anyone who disagrees with the president, takes issue with tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, says that Iraq is a quagmire, or dares to declare that all Americans deserve a living wage and guaranteed health care. The narrow, corporate-driven rhetoric that passes as reasonable political debate on Fox and most of the mainstream American media has become a laughing stock – if only to keep us from crying.” (Josh Silver, “The decline of US media: Fox News leads race to the bottom,” Huffington Post,  2/22/07)

And those “right wing” peasants must be suppressed!  For the good of The People!

“No wonder our political system can’t solve big problems. Ruthless opposition and dingbat delusions are the currency of right-wing success, and sand in the gears of democracy. Whether they’re cynical postures or sincere beliefs doesn’t matter. The grand national conversation that was intended to enable citizens and their representatives to find common ground for conflicting values has become a grand national midway of carny-barkers and rodeo clowns.” (Marty Kaplan, former Air America rodeo clown, “How would the Right know it’s wrong?” Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Huffington Post,10/5/09)

Because to McChesney, it all ties together:

“…any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.” (Robert McChesney, “The U.S. Media Reform Movement,” Monthly Review,, 9/2008)

And when I say “ties together”, I mean “to his real, larger goal“:

“Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism..” (Robert W. McChesney, “Journalism, Democracy…and Class Struggle,” Monthly Review, 11/2000).

So this is who we’re dealing with.

These are their goals.

These are the people that Al Franken and Mark Ritchie, apparently, are going to be shilling for tonight.

And I honestly wish I could attend.  And if someone does – if one of you liveblogs or streams it – let me know.  I’ll link it and push it in any way I can.

I was thinking about long lost loves the other day.

And I walked into a grocery store – and from half a store away, I saw a familiar profile – one I’d not seen for…years?  Decades?  A generation?

I walked over there, telling myself “there’s just no way”, setting expectations nice and low.

But is was true; it was that long-lost love.  I figured as I walked across the store that it was just a trick of distance and years, but as I got where I was going, I could see that the years had changed nothing.  Just as beautiful as ever.

Nesbitt’s Orange Soda is back:

I haven’t seen Nesbitt’s on sale in over 30 years.  It was the taste of my teens; going to the pop machine at the M and H station to buy cans of Nesbitt’s for a quarter.  The soda was a light, crisp, naturally-flavored concoction that was infinitely better-tasting than any other orange pop.  Forget Fanta; club Crush; especially be rid of “Minute Maid”, the brand that the Coca Cola Company replaced Nesbitts with.  Sickeningly sweet, it was an abomimation…

…especially against the dry, sweet perfection of Nesbitt’s.

I thought “certainly this is just a baby-boomer stunt; they must have some generic orange swill poured into a bottle with a Nesbitt’s label.

Nope.  Cane sugar, natural flavor. At least the label read right (and yes, I did remember the key parts of the label from when I was a kid)

I bought three.  I drank one.

Precisely the same.

My daughter – who doesn’t like orange pop – had one too.  “This is the bomb”.  That means its good…

It’s more than the bomb.  It’s like finding the first love of your life, thirty years later – and it’s even better than it was back then.

Mmm.