I ask my DFLer friends why they plan on voting for Mark Dayton.
“Because Tom Emmer is an angry extremist white man!”
“Because Target is anti-gay!”
“Because Emmer will cut the budget”…
…and so on.
But none of those responses answers my question; why are you voting for Mark Dayton?
Open thread for liberal commenters: Why are you voting for Mark Dayton? Actual reasons, please.
I remember meeting my first “tracker”. It was at the “Patriot Picnic” at Boom Island Park in 2006. We had then-House-candidate Michele Bachmann and Senate candidate Mark Kennedy on the show. The “tracker” was a surly, scrawny little guy whose demeanor screamed “latté-drinking, Ben Folds-listening, someday-Smart-Car-buying Macalester Anthropology major who needs a crap job real bad”. He put his camera up on a tripod and stood, surly and,oddly, ostentatious in his attempts to remain unostentatious, at the front of the audience tent (it was 101 that day), silently filming everything every Republican said.
It was hard not to mock the guy; every time we went to the audience for questions, I’d ask the poor, sweaty, underemployed little nipper if he had any. “Not at this time”, he’d intone, not breaking his focus.
Mr. Cranky was the first tracker I ever met – but far from the last. The DFL has trackers – either employees, or their de facto employees at “The Uptake” and The Minnesota “Independent” – in attendance whenever a GOP candidate appears in public, taping glumly away. The GOP, naturally, returns the favor. They do it because every once in a while they catch a candidate saying “let’s stick it to those morons in Bemidji” while speaking in Bloomington, and “let’s stick it to those cake-eaters in Bloomington” while speaking in Bemidji.
Of course, now that Mark Dayton is ostensibly getting out of the “tracker” business (at least, on his direct payroll; the Uptake, the Mindy and the rest of the leftyblogs that take their orders from the DFL are still on the job), suddenly “trackers” are the next great crisis in Minnesota politics, according to…Democrats.
“Spotty” from Caulking Tool turns t his crack investigative skills onto the GOP trackers. He complains that the trackers got too close to Dayton. I can see both sides of that one; they do get close. They have to; Dayton mumbles like he’s got a mouthful of garlic toast. There’s no point in “tracking” if you can’t hear what’s being said!
But that’s not really the fun part:
As Dayton points out, and as at least one commenter in the Strib comments affirms [A commenter in the Strib “affirms” it? Why not the guy yelling at his shadow on the 16 bus, while you’re at it? Wow, that’s a stringent standard of evidence! – Ed], it’s the voter intimidation that’s the real problem. Many people simply don’t want to be captured on video and have it appear on the web. It isharassment to keep these people from talking to a candidate.
Democrat voters must be the biggest pack of pansies in the world. It’s one thing that “Bad weather favors the GOP” is truism in Minnesota politics; whatever. But anyone who gets “intimidated” by a 100-pound twenty-something girl with a flipcam needs to face the spirit of guy who charged across Omaha Beach to defend that right to vote, and explain why they are such a bunch of simpering wastes of time and effort.
And remember – the Dems have their cameras in the GOPers’ faces too! And yet you don’t hear us mewling about “intimidation”. And our trackers at least take showers.
But here’s the real fun part; “Spotty” – an adult who blogs under a nom de plume, apparently because he writes things that he doesn’t want associated with his real identity, called his post “Chihuahuas with Flipcams”. And he wrote (with emphasis added):
When he came to DL, Mark Dayton introduced the Republican tracker by name from the stage. The recording of remarks is not the problem here; it’s the intimidation of ordinary citizens.
“Intimidation of ordinary citizens”.
Let’s go back in time to this past April 15. I spoke at the Tea Party at the Capitol Grounds. I met “Spot”, who was wandering around with a camera, a camera guy, and a microphone interviewing people for “The Uptake”, the lefty video hatchetblog.
I was wandering about, talking with people, when the security people came up to me:
…the only problem I heard about involved a reporter from “The Uptake”…Now, [the Uptake “reporter”, who is in fact one and the same person as “Spotty”] interviewed me briefly last year; I never saw his final product, although I was told either his voiceover or his editing really mangled the context of my interview; I wouldn’t know – I don’t watch the Uptake much. I did another standup with him after I got offstage – I figure if he and the Uptake want to [mangle the context of] what I said, it says more about him and them than it does about me. He referred to the people around him as “tea-baggers”; I gently corrected him, but I got a sneaking hunch it was a tell as to “the Uptake’s” overall tone of “coverage”.
But shortly after that, a few of the orange-clad security guys came up to me and said they’d been getting complaints about the Uptake’s crew. I asked them for specifics; they took me to a couple that that said the Uptake’s crew hadn’t identified themselves as a “news” crew that was going to publish an interview online, and that they seemed to be trying to get them to say something stupid, to make them – Tea Partiers in general, it seemed – look stupid. The woman said that the “reporter” seemed to be trying to pick a fight with her, trying to one-up her on her knowledge of issues; “I”m not an encyclopedia, I can’t answer all the questions he has right away”, she said, still visibly exasperated. Her husband, a Vietnam veteran, echoed his wife’s thoughts; “he was trying to pick a fight; he was harassing us”.
Intimidation?
Huh.
Not sure why the years-old tradition of video trackers is suddenly a DFL chanting point. Perhaps Dayton thinks it’s finally the terrorists, come to get him at last?
It’s 8PM, and I’m out on the patio at Keegans again, at “Meet Tom Emmer” night. Not that there’s going to be a lot to liveblog – I’ve met Tom Emmer! – but I’m here with a computer, so why not? About 21 people out here so far, and I expect more. Emmer isn’t here yet – he’s out raising funds.
8:03 – 25 people now. Not a fundraiser per se – just a meet ‘n greet.
I’m at a table with Barry Hickethier (running against Larry Pogemiller in District 59), Sue Jeffers, Craig Westover, John LaPlante, Guy Collins, and a whole slew of others.
The big table at Keegans. I'm getting deja vu...
8:12: Greg Wersal – judge candidate – is speaking now. Jacquie Emmer just showed up.
Greg Wersal speaks
8:25 – Barry Hickethier – who’s running against Pogey in SD59 – speaks.
Barry Hickethier speaks
Jacquie worked the crowd as Tom was detained at another fundraiser. Too bad none of us are heirs to a huge fortune, huh?
Jacquie Emmer talking with Terry Keegan
8:45 – Emmer has arrived; he’s working the room:
Emmer meets and greets
9:00 straight up – Emmer talking.
The message hasn’t changed, says Emmer. Dayton’s “message of hope” is about making more tax classifications.
“What’ll keep a business in Minnesota, if they’re going to be taxed like Dayton proposes? They’ll move! It’s a broken record”
Emmer speaks.
“Let’s stop destroying business! The only future for this state is the future we offer; people, not government! Tha’ts the art of constitutional government!”
“We have to start re-educating hte public as to the message we offer. And if we do that, w’ell not only win in November, but our kids will have the future we want ’em to have!”
Re: the Trackers: “We’ve been running a clean campaign! They’re the ones doing the attacking!”
“We need to leave the kids something other than our debt“. That got a big round of applause.
Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities debate – “They knew about our conflict already”.
Emmer working the crowd.
When are you going to turn Annette loose? “She’s out there!”
It’s time to kill off the Met Council; Tom and Annette are in complete agreement.
How about the negativity: “The campaign has just begun. In coming weeks, more on the air, more on the ground. TV and Also tell them – how depressed should the Dems be? They’ve spend eight million trashing us, and we’re still, here. The stuff that they ran? People love to see it – but it’s numbed the public. ”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Barry Hickethier asks “plan for fixing out-of-control costs of post-secondary Ed at the U of M?” “When I started talking with Bruinincks at the U, I see they have a lot of the same problems the state has. MNSCU is a big part of the problem; they require dupblicative services…”
It’s been a solid two years since the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers last elected a Mayor. Since Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci pulled the plug on Kool Aid Report, the lights at the MOB Secretary of State’s office have been off, the power bill’s gone unpaid, and the screen door is banging in the breeze – so nobody’s had time to hold the traditional election.
Seal of the Mayor of the MOB
The incumbent mayor, Johnny Roosh – who writes for this blog – has served, de facto, two terms as Mayor. It’s time to oil up the wheels of democracy and take them for a spin.
As such, I have appointed myself Secretary of State for Life (replacing the former SOSFL, Joe Tucci – don’t ask), and I have opened nominations for Mayor of the MOB, 2010 edition!
Nominations first. Then debates. Then denials. Then – mid-next-week, the election itself!
What if a group calling itself “Free Press” threw a public meeting to evangelize the idea of nationalizing the internet…
…and it turned out that the leadership of the group “Free Press” was on record favoring the complete squelching of economic and personal freedom?
That’d be…ironic, wouldn’t it?
As PJ O’Rourke said, life is full of ironies, if you’re stupid.
Tomorrow morning in Shot In The Dark.
As we began the march toward the primaries, and I saw that Mark Dayton had (according to the KSTP poll) a 13 point lead in the race over DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher, I sat back in my seat and wondered “Why?”
Why Mark Dayton – a superannuated playboy with a 30-year habit of treating electoral office as a hobby?
“Because he can?”
Sure, but that explains a lot of people running for office. Leslie Davis and Peter Idusogie and Ole Savior all ran for governor “because they could”. They didn’t have the deep pockets of the Dayton and Rockefeller families to bankroll them, of course – but deep pockets alone don’t win primaries, much less elections; if they did, we’d be talking about “Governor Corzine”, and “Former California Governor Huffington”, for that matter.
It takes more than will, and it takes more than just money. It takes skill and organization to spend all that money effectively in order to beat the combined brawn of the entire DFL machine to start a campaign, have it gain traction across this state, and take it through the primaries.
And that takes people who know the DFL; people who know the people whose palms need to be greased; people who know how to get out the people who get out the liberal votes; it takes people who know where the bodies are buried and how to put more there, as it were.
———-
One of those people is Ken Martin.
Martin is currently the director of “Win Minnesota“. If you read this blog, you know who they are: they are a PAC that launders the Dayton family’s political contributions to “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” and the “2010 Fund” and the other arms of the Dayton Campaign’s tightly-wound little money-laundering and distribution machine.
And in 2006, Martin was Mike Hatch’s campaign manager, orchestrating an epic smear campaign against Tim Pawlenty that came within a cat’s whisker of winning.
———-
Mike Hatch needs no introduction. A longtime legislator, former head of the DFL, former Attorney General, and two-time gubernatorial candidate, Hatch could be quickly but fairly described as the Lyndon Johnson of Minnesota politics.
Mike Hatch
Hatch has never been bashful about exerting his power. During the nineties, he essentially ran Minnesota’s healthcare industry from the Attorney General’s office, using the AGO’s power to force the likes of HealthPartners to insert his cronies into controlling positions (on “consumer protection” grounds, naturally).
In 2003, Hatch tried to use the power of his office to try to intimidate the Commerce Department into pushing for an illegal settlement with a Florida-based insurance company – an effort that involved a shady potemkin contribution that amounted in my opinion to virtual blackmail against his political opponents, including the Minnesota GOP. I reported on this story in 2003 (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five).
After his failed gubernatorial bid in 2006, Hatch went on to “consult” at the Attorney General’s office, with his successor and longtime protegé, Lori Swanson. It was, according to sources familiar with the arrangement, a potemkin consultancy; Swanson had served so long as Hatch’s understudy that the two were basically one and the same entity, for policy purposes.
It’s an open secret among Minnesota’s chattering classes that Mike Hatch is by no means ready to shuffle off into the sunset – at least when it comes to wielding political power.
And Hatch remains, by all accounts, close friends with Ken Martin.
———-
“So what?”, you might ask.
Here’s what.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are a superannuated playboy hobby politician with a reputation for being a blunderer. You’ve been “serving” inside the beltway, or been out in the political cold. Your last experience in state electoral politics was in 1995, when you left (hypothetically, mind you) the office of State Auditor.
What do you need to succeed?
A Chief of Staff who knows where the bodies are buried, and is dying to bury a few more.
And if you are – again, hypothetically – a long-time political majordomo who still thirsts for power, but has been rejected for the endorsement to get it via electoral means? How do you find that power? By latching onto a (hypothetical) administration led by an inconsequential candidate who is nonetheless capable of providing boundless funding to get elected, backstopped by an even less-consequential running mate (Yvonne Prettner-Solon, whose record is as negligible as her opponent’s, Annette Meeks’s, is impressive), that’s how. And then getting appointed to a position to influence the weak-kneed top of the ticket.
Rumors are trickling around Minnesota political circles that Hatch is angling for the Chief of Staff gig in a Dayton Administration.
A source with knowledge of capitol politics tells me that her or his sources saw a group of key Dayton staffers in the back room at a south-metro Perkins restaurant not long before the primaries. With them, according to the source, was Hatch’s pal and former campaign manger Ken Martin.
———-
Again, you might say “So what? It’s just a staff gig! A guy’s gotta earn a living!”
But Mike Hatch as Chief of Staff brings up all sorts of wrinkles. It seems fair to conjecture, given Dayton’s ineffectiveness as a leader and inexperience at executive office, that a Chief of Staff Hatch would have a very strong influence on the policies of the executive office. He also remains the de facto Attorney General; via his years at AG, he has an inordinate influence in the Commerce Department.
In other words, in a Mark Dayton administration, Mike Hatch would have unprecedented power for an unelected official in Minnesota.
“He’d be the King of Minnesota”, quipped my source.
Remember all those shootings in Obama’s Chicago? The gang warfare that’s made Chicago just about the most dangerous city between Juarez and Kandahar?
Maybe not – the national media has been pretty hands-off on “gun violence” in Chicago since The One’s ascenscion.
And it turns out that it’s even worse than the shooting figures indicate; in the event they catch a shooter, they can’t seem to put ’em in jail:
The Chicago Sun-Times tells “the story of why they won’t stop shooting in Chicago.” The newspaper said the story is told “by by the wounded, the accused and the officers who were on the street during a 2008 weekend when 40 people were shot, seven fatally.” Two years later, nearly all the shooters from that weekend have escaped charges. “You don’t go to jail for shooting people,” says Dontae Gamble, who took six bullets that weekend, only to see his alleged shooter walk free. So far, not one accused shooter has been convicted of pulling the trigger during those deadly 59 hours from April 18-20 of that year, a Sun-Times investigation found.
Only one suspected triggerman — a convicted armed robber caught with the AK-47 he allegedly used to blow away his boss — is in jail awaiting trial. Three other victims said they know who shot them but refused to testify. Six murders from the weekend remain unsolved. Time’s running out to catch the bad guys who shot 29 other people because there’s a three-year statute of limitations on aggravated batteries with firearms. The Chicago police batting average for catching shooters has fallen to an alarmingly low level. Detectives cleared 18 percent of the 1,812 non-fatal shootings last year. They were slightly better in catching killers — 30 percent of murders were cleared. Even though detectives cleared 18 percent of non-fatal shootings last year, almost half of those were cleared “exceptionally,” records show. That means more than 90 percent of those gunmen weren’t charged.
But FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, don’t let people defend themselves Mayor Daley! If you can’t do it, why should they?
It is my right, under the First Amendment, to walk into a biker bar and tell them that leather chaps look like gay S and M wear.
Just because it’s my right doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
Billy Joe Tubb, writing in South Carolina Traditional Values blog, takes on the real reasons for not building the Ground Zero Ground Zero Debris Field mosque:
The fact is that building a mosque next to the site of the World Trade Center Twin Towers, which were destroyed during the 11 September attacks, is a strange story. This is because the mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they have not heard of it until the shouting became loud between the supporters and the objectors, which is mostly an argument between non-Muslim US citizens!
That is the interesting part; the actual Muslims are hardly party of the discussions.
Neither did the Muslims ask for a single building, nor do the angry Muslims want the mosque. This is one of the few times when the two opposing sides are in agreement. Nevertheless, the dispute has escalated, and has reached the front pages of the press and the major television programs, demonstrations have been staged in the streets, and large posters have been hung on buses roaming the streets of New York calling for preventing the building of the mosque and reminding the people of the 11 September crime. It really is a strange battle!
I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. Is there a side that is committed to this mosque? The fact is that in the news reports there are names linked to this project that costs 100 million dollars!
The building used to be a Burlington Coat Factory…
Tubb follows the money:
The sides enthusiastic for building the mosque might be building companies, architect houses, or politicized groups that want suitable investments?! I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation, or he is an investor who wants quick profits. This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a clever deed. The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery.
…and cuts to the important point:
What the US citizens do not understand is that the battle against the 11 September terrorists is a Muslim battle, and not theirs, and this battle still is ablaze in more than 20 Muslim countries. Some Muslims will consider that building a mosque on this site immortalizes and commemorates what was done by the terrorists who committed their crime in the name of Islam. I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a symbol or a worship place that tomorrow might become a place about which the terrorists and their Muslim followers boast, and which will become a shrine for Islam haters whose aim is to turn the public opinion against Islam. This is what has started to happen now; they claim that there is a mosque being built over the corpses of 3,000 killed US citizens, who were buried alive by people chanting God is great, which is the same call that will be heard from the mosque.
Worth a read.
CORRECTION: I mistakenly identified the author as Billy Joe Tubb. the actual author is; Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed writing in Al Sharq Al-Awsat:
I regret any confusion.
I’d always suspected this was true. Now, we have documentary evidence.
(Not remotely safe for work, or kids, or those with delicate senses of language or decorum).
One of the many pleasures of last Saturday’s MOB party was the formal debut of the MOB’s first baby, “Baby Moose”, who is the child of Hammerschwing Ben and Mall Diva, who – this is the funny part – met at a MOB event.
As befits the child, nephew and grandchild of bloggers (the grands are Night Writer and The Reverend Mother from the eponymous Night Writer blog), it’s perhaps fitting that the kid’s already got a blog, at three weeks old.
And the little guy’s tripped into an eternal truth; you really gotta read the label:
example, I’m discovering that many words look and sound the same, but that meaning can change based on context. I’ve also learned that something that looks or sounds good in writing might not be as appealing in practice. For example:
Ok, “butt paste” sounds kind of gross, but it feels SO good. “Butt rub” sounds as if it would feel good, but — trust me — it’s not the same. Why would they even take a chance of confusing someone like that?
In a debate at “Game Fair” over the weekend – a firearm-friendly venue if there ever was one – Tom Emmer pressed Mark Dayton on his record on gun issues.
And perhaps it’s a good thing that we’ve come to the point that Mark Dayton, as extreme a liberal as exists in Minnesota, someone so far to the left that Margaret Anderson Kelliher felt the need to triangulate to his right during the primary, felt the need to go all tactical on the audience:
“I have two loaded .357 Magnum pistols in my home right now in a lock box,” DFL candidate Mark Dayton told a crowd gathered Saturday at Game Fair, a hunting and fishing expo in Anoka. “I have a 9mm pistol at home. I have a twelve-gauge shotgun at home.”
Battle won, right?
Gary Gross at LFR says “not so fast“; I’ll add emphasis:
Here’s Sen. Dayton’s response:
Mark Dayton: Well, I had a D rating from the NRA in 1982 when I ran for the Senate. I had a two- an A rating in 2000. There were two principal votes you can look em up when I was a Senator. One was banning Cop Killer bullets. And one reason that I have the endorsement of the Minneapolis Police and Peace Officers Association, Representative, is because I respect the law enforcement men and women. I was on a ride-along last week to, as I’ve been several times with a police officer in St. Paul. And those guys wear bulletproof vests every time they go out there. Men and women. And anybody who wants to go out there and see them put their lives on the line to protect us.
What, you want to kill cops?
Except – as Gary found – the “Cop Killer Bullet” bill was anything but (I’ll add emphasis):
SEC. 5. ARMOR PIERCING AMMUNITION.
(a) EXPANSION OF DEFINITION OF ARMOR PIERCING AMMUNITION.–Section 921(a)(17)(B) of title 18, United States Code, is amended–
(1) in clause (i), by striking “or” at the end;
(2) in clause (ii), by striking the period at the end and inserting a semicolon; and
(3) by adding at the end the following:
“(iii) a projectile that may be used in a handgun and that the Attorney General determines, under section 926(d), to be capable of penetrating body armor; or
“(iv) a projectile for a center-fire rifle, designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability, that the Attorney General determines, under section 926(d), to be more likely to penetrate body armor than standard ammunition of the same caliber.”.
So the “Cop Killer Bullet” bill – written by Ted Kennedy – would have given the Attorney General the power to determine, more or less by fiat, exactly what constituted a “cop-killer” bullet.
Which means they start with the boogeymen rounds – the so-called “Teflon” bullets – and the next day they’ll be noting, correctly, that metal-jacketed hardball rounds penetrate more than plain unjacketed lead or wadcutters.
It also means that the Attorney General – or more likely his employees in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – could make sweeping rulings about ammunition availability and legality by whim and fiat, creating new classes of criminals at will with a stroke of the pen.
Mark Dayton – for a more bureaucratic world.
Lori Sturdevant is doing her most important job; trying to spin the DFL’s sows’ ears into silk purposes to buffalo the thin film of metro liberals and outstate oldsters who still believe the media into thinking they’re looking at a silk purse.
Here’s the sow’s ear: the DFL’s endorsed candidate is a superannuated playboy hobby politician who’s been buying elections for his collection for thirty years. His name’s been in peoples’ living rooms – first as a news story (most expensive campaign in Minnesota history), then as a punchline (running like a scared kitten in 2005, leaving 534 other legislators to face the terrorists alone). He just ignored the DFL endorsement, wasted millions of DFL dollars in a fruitless primary, and once again proved the impotence of the DFL endorsement for state office – based purely on his campaign budget and his appeal to outstate oldsters who remember, or mistake him for, his father. Or grandfather.
Behold: Silk Purse!
THE ECONOMY’S BEEN AWFUL for too long. Voters are looking for familiarity and a message of hope. Along comes a candidate for governor who fills that bill, even though he stands apart from his party, and who has special appeal in northern Minnesota.
Sow’s ear: Dayton is to the DFL what Bob Dole was to the national GOP in 1996.
Silk purse:
Is it 1982 all over again?
Sow’s ear: There are parallels with 1982, that dim and dismal time in Minnesota history:
Mark Dayton’s narrow DFL primary victory Tuesday was reminiscent of the late Gov. Rudy Perpich’s comeback 28 years ago. Then, Perpich benefited from a well-known name, a title that assured attention — “former Gov.” — and the loyalty of his fellow Iron Rangers. He bested Warren Spannaus, who as a former party chair and attorney general had the DFL machine on his side, much as House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher did this year.
The parallels between Dayton’s campaign to date and Perpich’s are numerous enough to raise suspicion that the “former U.S. Sen.” is consciously following Rudy’s 1982 playbook…Like Perpich, Dayton skirted the DFL establishment without alienating it. Like Perpich, Dayton emphasizes quality public education as the best ticket to a better economy. And like Perpich, Dayton is a quirky but genuine guy whom people easily underestimate.
Silk Purse: There is none.
Well, not if you’re a DFLer. For the rest of us, Speed Gibson works Sturdevant over like Mike Tyson punching out Santino from Project Runway.
Mark Dayton is “Perpichean” she says, even though the Perpich was no ultra-liberal. She’d know that if she’d bothered to read the unsigned lead Editorial on the next page.
Dayton is asking for Minnesota to again make its top personal income tax rate one of the highest in the country. That’s where it ranked 25 years ago — when a DFL governor, Rudy Perpich, pushed hard for its reduction to improve business competitiveness.
As the senior DFL mouthpiece at the Star Tribune, Sturdevant is of course overlooking the biggest similarity between Perpich and Dayton: erratic, inexplicable behavior. Perpich, you may remember, fancied himself a Presidential contender, doing goofy things like dying his hair jet black and changing “Rudy” to “Rudoloph G” Perphich. Dayton’s issues you likely know already, but that’s just “quirky” according to Sturdevant.
And by the way, Dayton does not really emphasize quality education, just more money. Perpich was a true education reformer (Charter Schools, e.g.), and did in fact improve the quality of education for those able to access those options.
When will the Strib cop to the fact that Lori Sturdevant is nothing but a full-time DFL flak in journalists’ clothes?
From 2004, Lex Green at the Chicago Boys blog – the best political/economics blog that I never have time to read – worked over the “United States of Canada” meme – the sore losers who sprang up after John Kerry got sent back to Ville de Palooque:
The basic idea is that the Blue Staters are so horrified about living under the rule of George Bush that they want to break the USA into pieces and form their own country. Of course, they are just venting.
The core strength of “liberal” America resides in the descendants of Yankee puritans, a memetic “Greater New England” that sprang from the Yankee diaspora which settled the Northern tier of the country. These folks have been living uneasily with their fellow Americans for over 350 years. They have been trying to reform the rest of us for our own good the whole time: Revolution, abolition, prohibition, civil rights, environmentalism � . Sometimes they are even right, as much as I hate to admit it. Look at a picture of Cotton Mather, or Susan B. Anthony, or any eat-your-peas liberal do-gooder. The eyes: sad at the foolishness and injustice of the world — the mouth, a mirthless line — and the jaw, set in determination to rectify the world’s wrongs and smite its wrongdoers. Those Yankees, genetic or memetic, are the core of the “progressive” element in American life, and they have been for centuries, and they’ll never change.
Spoofing this movement was some of the most fun I’ve had writing this blog.
And now, ripped from the headlines, “Jamie Stiehm” writes in USN&WR:
All states are not created equal, as this summer’s performances in Congress and other political platforms show anew. Some states are pretty great; some are just plain trouble. Take [Texas, Arizona and South Carolina], for example…
…let me make a modest proposal: that the states that seceded–let them be gone! That means South Carolina, Texas, and even Florida as a bonus, along with the Deep South states that send recalcitrant Republican representatives to Washington with no intention of doing the nation’s business. They are there to block, taunt, and undermine a president, a man from Illinois making social progress. This time, let’s let them go without a fight. Oh, and we’ll keep Virginia, more reconstructed than the rest, and give them Arizona.
…by way of calling for the reddest of the red states to secede.
Let’s make sure we’re clear on the comparison here; people from the ultra-conservative fringe advocate secession = knitted brows and outraged talk of sedition. Typically vapid Ivy League legacy slime working puff jobs with major media outlets talk about seceding or expelling states that offend them = look at the shiny object.
Wonder if Erik Black will furrow his brow and write a scholarly piece dissecting the pathologies of the left’s mania for secession.
I’ll take “Under” on the over/under.
I have a quick question for the Twin Cities’ leftyblog buildup.
Since gay marriage has emerged, at least for the DFL, as the most important issue in the gubernatorial election – at least as re the perceived record of the GOP’s candidate – I think it’s only fair to ask “why has the DFL been such an utter waste of time when it comes to passing gay marriage?” If there really is an outcry for gay marriage, then why didn’t the DFL-controlled legislature use their four years of absolute legislative hegemony to push the issue?
Because if there genuinely is popular support for a measure then there is no such thing as a “wasted vote”.
Here’s how it works; Representative A (DFL – Spike Lake) brings up a gay marriage bill. Representative B (GOP – Mud Lake) bottles it up in committee and it dies. DFL candidate C runs for Represenative B’s job, and uses the vote to stir up popular anger at Mr. B, who is turned out of office by the voters who are demanding gay marriage.
In the next session, Representative A and C and fifty other DFLers (and GOPers, scared by the demise of Representative B) pass the bill through the House , and send it to the Senate. There, Senator D (GOP – Ham Prairie) bottles the bill up in committee. That fall, GOP candidate E runs against Senator D in the primary, capitalizing on the growing grass-roots realization that gay marriage is what the people want, and gets the endorsement, and wins the vote in Ham Prairie, a reliably GOP district that, like all Minnesotans, really do support gay marriage.
The next session, the House and Senate both pass gay marriage bills. They are carried to Governor F. Ms. F vetoes the bill. In the following gubernatorial election, the popular support for gay marriage sends Governor F. packing; pro-gay marriage former state insurance commissioner G is elected governor. And in his first session, when presented with a gay marriage bill, he signs it, just as he promised in the keynote to his winning campaign.
——–
Is the example above a fanciful hypothetical? Yes and no. It was, more or less, how “Concealed Carry” was passed in Minnesota. Pat Pariseau and Linda Boudreaux proposed “Shall Issue” legislation for four or five different sessions (if I remember correctly, and I may well not) before the votes were there to get the victory in 2003. It wasn’t because they thought they could win every single time – in 1997, they certainly could not. It was because they knew they wanted the issue in front of the legislature, because the process surrounding the debate would eventually win legislators over (and see to the electoral firing of legislators who opposed the popular measure). And this was in a Legislature that was not controlled by Republicans, much less conservatives.
The MNGOP’s gubernatorial candidate opposes gay marriage. So, by the way, do most Americans, in one form or another; while many support civil unions (myself included), Gay Marriage proposals keep losing in referendum after referendum.
“Why waste the votes?”, one DFL wag asked me when I brought it up once.
I dunno – because if you believe in the rightness of your cause, that’s what you do; if you believe in the democratic process and you believe that the people really do support your cause, then there is no such thing as a “wasted vote”.
The DFL knows this, because while they are fine using gay marriage as a cudgel against conservative politicians to fire up, or shore up, their base, they have spent their last four years of absolute hegemony in the Legislature pushing exactly zero gay marriage legislation to Governor Pawlenty.
“Shall issue” handgun laws survived and grew during at least seven consecutive legislative tests against nominally hostile legislatures. Why doesn’t gay marriage get even one test in a relentlessly friendly legisature?
All through American history, there have been those who asked “what’s it all about?”
The answer, whether stated or (usually) implicit, is “to beat your opponent”.
In 1776, we had a tyrannical king and his troops to send packing.
In 1864, it was the slave-owning secessionistic southern Brahmins.
In 1945, it was the Nazis and the bombers of Pearl Harbor.
In 2002, it was the people who planned 9/11.
And today?
It’s the cast, creators and producers of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”.
Jersey Shore's employees. Er, cast.
So when people like Tony Jones sound ready to give up…:
But, as far as I could tell in the 30 minutes that I watched before I could watch no more, there is no reason to watch the characters of Jersey Shore other than voyeurism. There’s no story, no character development. There is pure exhibitionism. In that sense, Jersey Shore is like pornography. And, also like pornography, it’s completely predictable what will happen: party, fight, sex, repeat.
I’m not one to proclaim the denouement of our culture or our country based on the devolution of our fetishes, but after seeing Jersey Shore, I might be ready to change my tune on that.
No, don’t, Tony. “Jersey Shore” may well be the ultimate proof of my theory – that Mike Judge’s classic, underrated movie Idiocracy was a comedy for the social right and a to-do list for the social left – but for those of us who see better things ahead, it’s a call to action.
So you know those emotions you feel when you watch “Jersey Shore” (And I’ll cop to it; I saw three minutes of the first episode, and felt the same way)? Don”t let them make you write off Western Civilization.
In the immortal words of Jed Eckert (Harry Dean Stanton) in that classic manifesto of flyover-land “FU” belligerence, Red Dawn – don’t let Jersey Shore get you down. Let it turn.
Let it turn into something else.
So Saturday night was the sixth annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers summer party.
It was a gorgeous night, except for a little rainstorm that swept through about two hours into the party.
And even that was pretty nice. But we’ll come back to that.
The party focused out at Keegans’ “Druid’s Glen”, their wonderful new cigar patio.
It’s hard to go wrong anywhere at Keegans, of course.
Frequent commenter Bill C and Lassie, from Freedom Dogs and True North
And when it did rain – a little twenty minute gullywasher that drove most of the crowd indoors for a bit – it was really one of the nicest moment of the past few weeks; the rain washed the humidity out of the air, and once the clouds passed through they were followed by a cool breeze that, after the past two weeks of stinking humidity, was worth sitting in the rain to feel.
Don Lokken. He doesn't blog, but I bought an Iron City Houserockers record from him back in 1986.
Reverend Mother and Buddhapatriot
Peg Kaplan from What If?
Melissa, the waitress with the memory of a hundred elephants on Red Bull.
The star attraction, of course, was “Moose” – AKA “Mini-Ben”, the three-week-old son of Mall Diva and Mr. Mall Diva from Night Writer. Mr. and Mrs. Diva met at a MOB event some years ago, got married, and last Saturday brought Moose, the MOB’s first baby and, I think it’s safe to say, the MOB’s First Baby.
Moose (AKA "Mini Ben") with Mall Diva and the Reverend Mother (photo Lassie)
Anyway – hope to see you at the Winter party, this coming February or, if I forget, March…
Earlier today, I bagged on the regional left for recycling each others’ stories long after they’ve been debunked.
It’s tempting to think it’s because they’re all talking from the same slate of topics. It’s so prevalent it’s also tempting to think that it’s a matter of top-down policy – to repeat not only the big lies but the little ones often enough that people start to believe it.
Over at Cackling Spoo, “Spot” repeats an old slander:
[GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer] also been a fan and financial supporter of Bradlee Dean…
Of course, if you want the facts about anything to do with politics, you need to go to a conservative blog. This “issue” is no exception; we gut-shot that particular meme two months ago.
Twin Cities leftyblogs; continually confirming the adage “Distrust, then verify. Then carry on with the distrust”.
As we mentioned on the show on Saturday, there’ll be a “Meet Tom and Jacquie Emmer” night at Keegans this Wednesday at 8PM.
Stop on by and, er, meet Tom and Jacquie!
CORRECTION: It’s at Keegans, of course. So many events, so many Irish names.
It’s the keystone of Mark Dayton’s entire plan, if he’s elected governor, for trying to close the DFL’s budget deficit.
It’s “Tax the Rich”.
On Esme Murphy’s WCCO TV show this morning (the program should be called “DFL Puff Piece”, but we’ll come back to that later), Dayton said “the rich” start at $150,000 a year – $173,000 if filing jointly. (The exchange starts at 3:28 of the linked video, with the actual statement around 3:50 or so)
Courtesy of Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring, here’s the transcript:
MURPHY: You do have a specific plan in which you have called for tax increases for the top 10 percent of Minnesotans. People have pointed out that the top 10 percent includes people that might be in that $136,000 income bracket for single people. You’ve changed that a little bit & said that it’s perhaps people making $150,000. Which is it?
SEN. DAYTON: I’ll send you the news reports going back months now that reference taxable income that has, I guess, confused some people so now I’m going to say total income. But that’s over $150,000 for an individual, over $173,000 for a couple filing jointly. Rep. Emmer says that that’s middle income…middle class. Those are people that work hard for a living but the fact is that that makes them wealthier than 90 percent of the rest of Minnesotans.
And it really obscures the issue. I’m really talking about the rich and the super-rich, the wealthiest 1 percent who make over $1,000,000 a year, over 25,000 households. According to the Minnesota Department of Revenue, pay only two-thirds of the percent of their incomes to state and local taxes as the rest of Minnesotans.
And Rep. Emmer & Mr. Horner don’t want to raise taxes on them by even one penny. And that’s the difference & that’s the issue here.
Here’s another amusing portion of the interview:
MURPHY: Going back to this issue of taxing people making $200,000. What percentage would a couple making $175,000. What percentage would their taxes go up under your plan? What percentage would people making $1,000,000..what percentage would their taxes go up?
DAYTON: Now that I’ve been endorsed, I can enlist the cooperation….the only 3 entities that have the computer capabilities are the Department of Revenue…and the Senate Tax Committee & the House Tax Committee. And now that I’ve won the DFL primary, I will enlist their support.
I don’t have a supercomputer or a large computer capability to do that simulation. What I’ve been saying is that people making $175,000 a year will pay a little bit more in income taxes and someone making $1,000,000 a year will pay more and somebody making $10,000,000 to $100,000,000 a year will pay significantly more. And again, my two opponents are saying that someone who’s making $10,000,000 or $100,000,000 a year should not pay one penny more in income taxes. And meanwhile, everyone else will pay more in higher property taxes or higher sales taxes under their proposals.
Now, that’s pretty ludicrous already; it’s two moderately successful middle managers; a computer programmer married to a contract nurse; a mid-level state administrator and a tenured college professor.
Pretty crazy definition of “the rich”.
But here’s the interesting part: Dayton is lying.
Here’s his position paper on taxes, from his campaign website.
Click to view full-size
Check it out. “The Rich”, according to the website, start at $130K – $150 for a couple.
That’s a cop and a nurse. A car mechanic and a project manager. A couple of mid level teachers.
You feeling rich, Minnesota?
Under New York state law and city ordinance, if a Muslim group buys property in lower Manhattan, and builds a mosque subject to city building codes and zoning regulations, a principled property-rights advocate should say “they have the right to do it” – even if the entire project is a thumb in the eye of the victims and the city that suffered so much on 9/11.
But I should also think it’d be perfectly legal for someone to buy some property near the mosque and build – subject to codes and zoning, naturally – a statue. Of, say, Mohammed.
Maybe 110 stories tall.
UPDATE: This is, of course, satire.
Maybe the mosque builders would get the point then.
In the wake of “Journolist”, it’s easy to see collusion everywhere.
It’s hard to tell, sometimes, if it’s because the lefty media and “alternative” media are completely in collusion, or if they all basically repeat each others’ stories. Or both.
Last week, we shredded the thin gruel of “Minnesota Observer”‘s piece claiming that Salem Radio Twin Cities owed “equal time” to King Banaian’s opponent in House District 15B.
And even though I pretty much shredded the point, apparently regional lefties haven’t gotten the memo. James Kessler, a peripatetic anti-conservative letter-to-the-editorialist, writes the Saint Cloud Times:
According to section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934, which says, and I quote, “If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station.”
What it means is that if, for example, a candidate has several hours of air time every week on a radio station, then that radio station must give that candidate’s opponents equal air time every week. So perhaps King Banaian or KYCR-AM 1570 would care to explain how exactly Banaian is able to keep his broadcast on that radio station without that station providing equal opportunities for Banaian’s opponent?
If you read Shot In The Dark, you know that the law applies to radio stations that are heard in the district. KYCR – King’s station – is not heard in 15B.
After all, Banaian is running for the District 15B seat in the Legislature. That station gives him four hours every week. Are they also giving his opponents the same amount of air time every week?
And it’s not like his careful refusal to mention his own candidacy on that radio show means he is falling within the law. That he is a candidate for political office and that he has a radio show is enough to require that KYCR give his opponent equal air time.
As we discussed last week: KYCR is heard barely, if at all, in District 15B. Ms. Lewis would need to drive to Eagan – 90 minutes each way, plus two hours on the air, plus prep time – on Saturdays during prime campaign time, to do a show that would not be heard at all in the district at hand.
Perhaps Janet Lewis – the DFLer who won the primary last week to run against King – should tell the leftyblog community to quit trying to do her favors.
All my friends in the Red River Valley – I’ll be on AM1100 The Flag with Rob Port at 6:35 or so tomorrow morning talk about the Minnesota governor’s race, among others. Expect that we’ll wrap up talk about the primary, and the road to November.
You can listen in here:
Live video by Ustream
UPDATE: I got bumped to tomorrow morning.
District 54 Picnic at Central Park in Roseville – 2540 Lexington Avenue, Thursday evening. For info, call: 612 242 7485
It was a bruising, ugly primary season. Minnesota – especially all of us of the chattering classes – could use a break, a respite to get together over the things that matter; beer, companionship, beer, cigars, beer, food and beer.
That respite is here!
Saturday is the Sixth Annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Summer Party! We’ll be at Keegans at 7PM!
Come on down, enjoy what promises to be a glorious, not-quite-so-hot evening in Keegans’ brand-new cigar patio, and hang out at the coolest party in town!
You don’t have to be a blogger; you just gotta love hanging out with fun, interesting people. And the MOB is strenuously non-partisan; we specifically invite all our DFLer friends who especiallyneed to heal up from this past week’s trench warfare!
Join us!
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.
(All times Central)
So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:
Join us!
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