"Oops. Gotta go dearie. I crapped myself."

Just what we need…

To reach the older market, wireless carriers are offering lessons in how to text, introducing phones with oversized buttons and fine-tuning their marketing strategies.

…octogenarians texting behind the wheel…how much slower could they go in the left lane with their turn signal on for the last ten miles?

When I saw some of the regional DFL talking points bots tweeting that “Pawlenty pardoned a sex criminal!”, I figured this has got to be about as accurate as every other DFL hit meme this past six months.

And having read  the Strib’s telling of the story, I see I was right.  But then, when it comes to the DFL inflating “dirt” about Republicans far beyond anything the facts would justify, the Dems are always in a league of their own.   We saw it with last week’s Hackbarth

Two years ago, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and two other officials pardoned Jeremy Giefer, who had served a short time in jail in the 1990s as a young man for having sex with a 14-year-old girlfriend whom he later married.

So far so good.  Giefer, then 19, got his girlfriend, then 14, pregnant.  It’s illegal, of course; he did his time, and then married the girl when she reached the age of consent at 16. 

So given the facts at hand, the Governor – along with Attorney-General Swanson and then-chief-justice Eric Magnuson – unanimously voted to grant Giefer a “pardon extraordinary”, a qualified pardon granted to people who’ve served their time and, by a set of criteria that are more than a little exclusive, including having completed their sentence for at least ten years.  Pawlenty voted to grant three of them out of ten opportunities.

Blue Earth County prosecutors now say Giefer was sexually assaulting another young girl hundreds of times before and after he received his pardon…charges filed this month allege seven years of abuse by Giefer, now 36, of a girl who is now 17.

Giefer was charged with five counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, five counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of incest.

The girl told authorities that she had been sexually abused by Giefer more than 250 times since she was 9 years old, according to a criminal complaint.

The county attorney also notes that there was not a solitary hint of the new allegations against Giefer until long after the pardon extraordinary.

Not good enough for the DFL’s chanting-point bots, who apparently think all government officials must be clairvoyant in all their actions.

Allowing for the fact that Gieffer is innocent of the allegations until proven guilty, and that pretty  much everyone agrees that the allegations, if true, are reprehensible (I have to clarify that, since if I don’t some leftyblogger will claim that I’m “supporting sexual abuse of minors”, albeit never to my face), the regional left’s take on this case is curious.

Clairvoyance: Pardons have to be issued on their merits.  Pawlenty (and Magnuson and, let’s remember, DFL Attorney-General Swanson) seemed to have held applicants for pardons extraordinary to a fairly high standard, granting them to a decided minority of applicants.  Those that are bagging on Pawlenty for this pardon seem to want an additional, higher level of proof – the extra-sensory perception of activities utterly unknown to law enforcement in any way, shape or form.   To the left, apparently, the movie Minority Report was a documentary, not sci-fi.

Would we want government to be that clairvoyant, even if it were possible? (All of you who say citizens should just suck it up without question or complaint when the TSA gropes your children at the airport are recused with prejudice)

Pardon Me?:  Isn’t it the left that usually chides the right for being too hidebound on sentencing and punishment?  Or is that only when it comes to election time and the left is courting the felon vote that felons are considered rehabilitated?

Bear in mind, this is not quite the same as Mike Huckabee’s pardon of a violent offender who went on to kill four cops; Giefer showed no evidence of violence, or even coercion (beyond the whole “ick” factor of being a 19 year old knocking up a 14 year old; even in rural Blue Earth county, the “Creepy” formula was and remains “(Age / 2) + 7”.  That’s science, so don’t bother arguing).

But as we discovered in this past governor’s race, what it’s really all about to the DFL is to have a prejudicial sound bite; people who tend to vote liberal will absorb a seven second sound bite (when it can’t be boiled down to a two-second slogan) but be immune to sixty seconds of context-setting.

Pretty ingenious, in a very depressing sort of way.

After a couple of years of trolling Youtube, I realized something – it’s been close to thirty years since I’ve seen a Lip Sync show.

You know – the ones they had back in the sixties…

…and seventies…

…and very very very early eighties…

…where a band or singer would lip-sync along with a song or, in some rare cases, sing over the recorded instrumental track.  After about age 12, it was hard not to notice that the guitars weren’t plugged in; there were no string sections visible; often as not, the lips weren’t synched.

Now, with vids everywhere, I don’t know if I’ve seen any of these lip sync shows; I don’t miss ’em much.

But I used to wonder; why did artists never ever ever spoof the conventions of the lip synch show?  All those years, and I don’t recall it ever happening.

Until now:

Heh.

…just so no one can say he didn’t lift a finger to reduce a bloated federal sector in a move widely reported as a “move to the center.”  A federal pay freeze yes, but consider this:

The freeze doesn’t extend to new hiring, bonuses or step increases. It doesn’t even match the three-year freeze recommended by the President’s deficit commission.

…and yet, it’s just to much to bear… it’s just not fair.

To whom? Why the poor, the huddled, the downtrodden federal workers of course.

American Federation of Public Employees President John Gage yesterday derided President Obama’s federal pay freeze as a “slap at working people.”

That might be a stretch. I know a lot of “working people” and they might take offense at being lumped in with government desk jockeys who enjoy unmatched job security, perks and disproportionate pay.

federal employees operate in a pay-and-benefit universe that no longer exists in the private economy. According to recent analyses by USA Today, total compensation for federal workers has risen 37% over 10 years—after inflation—compared to 8.8% for private workers. Federal workers earned average compensation of $123,000 in 2009, double the private average of $61,000.

[tape rewinding sound]

double the private average of $61,000. [emphasis and repetition mine]

Unions like to argue that federal jobs are unique, yet in occupations that exist both in government and the private economy—nurses, surveyors, janitors, cooks—the federal government pays 20% more than private firms.

Liberals are right! There are two worlds in America.

an estimated 2.1 million nonmilitary full-time [federal] workers (excluding 600,000 postal workers)

…who live in a fairy-tale world of fat pay and unmatched job security. If it weren’t for the fact that even the Pentagon has windows, they would have no idea what “working people” even look like.

Market forces have forced a painful but necessary redeployment of human capital in virtually every sector save one: the United States federal government. Obama’s less-than-token effort to realign the federal payroll with reality isn’t significant enough to be remembered let alone effect the fiscal reductions necessary to reduce our deficit.

Mr. President, you can put your finger back down and go back to the pressing work of destroying our nation’s financial future.

Back during the 2008 campaign, I noted one of the immutable truths of American politics; the only reason the institutional left ever builds up a Republican candidate is to tear them right back down.

The classic example, of course, was John McCain; the left spent the better part of a decade solemnly declaring that “McCain is the good Republican”, willing to “compromise”  – praise that Mac curried aggressively.  But once Mac became an endorsed candidate, the knives came out; the “moderate”, “post-partisan” McCain was suddenly – and had always been – an “extremist”.

Is the left trying to set up Sarah Palin in the same way?

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters has a theory:

Would you ever in your wildest dreams imagine Chris Matthews flatteringly comparing Sarah Palin to former President Bill Clinton?

During a lengthy opening segment about Palin’s political future on the syndicated program bearing his name, Matthews said, “There’s one unlikely Democrat you might compare to Sarah Palin when it comes to being a natural: the generally incomparable Bill Clinton”

And why would Tingly do that?

After all, it’s got to be one way or the other: media live to build people up and/or knock them down. We’ve grown so accustomed to the latter with their treatment of Palin that we haven’t considered the alternative.

Of course, this could all backfire miserably since the more attention they heap on Palin, the more folks currently with a negative opinion of her might change their minds.

It’s a little early to speculate about 2012.

But not about the left and media’s (pardon the redundancy) manipulation of public opinion…

While the rest of the world’s economy spits and sputters, Canada’s makin’ bacon like nobody’s business, recovering from the world’s recession more convincingly than any other developed nation. Now, having gained a chip in the world economic game, they want to cash it in.

“When countries feel confident they tend to assert their national interests,” says Perry Spitznagel, vice-chair of law firm Bennett Jones LLP and organizer of a business forum last week titled “Canada Rising: Our Future as a Global Economic Leader.”

Down the road, experts say, Canada might use its newfound muscle in any number of ways, from demanding better treatment in trade deals with the U.S. to taking a leading role in the development of oil and other resources in the Arctic.

Ahhh. Hmmmm. I see.

My seasoned, thoughtful analysis: I can’t believe anyone lives North of International Falls.

Today’s recount has resulted in my friend and NARN colleague King Banaian officially winning the District 15B House race.

Congratulations, KB!

Yeah, I know.  It’s French.  Although since Sarkozy took office, that’s not been anywhere nearly as derogatory as it was for much of our adult lives.

And not only is it among the most aggressively bloodthirsty national anthems in the world (the choruses end “To arms, citizens!  Form your battalions!  We’ll march!  We’ll march, and water our fields with the blood of the impure!”), but it is a living artifact the French Revolution, a time when “liberal” populism was co-opted by “A Better France” into an epic horror, of show trials and pseudo-judicial mass-murder in the name of rule by men, not laws, of a type that served as a model for every blood-sucking tyrant, singular or group, that ever followed.

Still, this version of France’s national hymn, “La Marseillaise” (which is apparently French for “Yes, We Can!”) by Mireille Mathieu – “the Sparrow of Avignon” – has been my non-stop earworm for the past week.

And it’s a wonderful version of that vainglorious, blood-soaked tune for so many reasons.

Golly: It was recorded at the height of Charles DeGaulle’s Gallocentric era, when France may have marched to the beat of its own percussionniste, but in marched with a purpose.  It was a time when the French – including pop-culteur icons like Mathieu – could sing unabashedly patriotic music without slathering it with post-modern irony.

Rdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrd – I never took French.  Oh, I hitchiked around France, getting by on my year each of high-school Latin and Spanish, my German accent, and my lack of fear of looking like an idiot in a foreign language.  I could read things pretty well, and when I tried to speak, people at best figured out what I was saying, and at worst heard my fluent German accent and at least figured I wasn’t a Yanque, so they cut me a break.  But real speakers of French have always tittered at my accent, especially since I roll my “r”s in a way that people who learn Parisian French – which is most of vous – do not.

So listen to Matheiu wrap that Avignon accent ardrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdround the song, and rdrdrdrdrdrdroll those Rs. “Mardrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdchons!  Mardrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdrdchons! She sounds like a six-barreled minigun!  Glordrdrdrdrdrdrdrieuse!

Frappe-O-Licious!: The more world politics I see, the more I realize the sheer worth of enlightened self-interest, both for individuals and nations.  And yeah, I know – “enlightened” and “French” aren’t usually in the same Zip code.  But bonne golly, this is a version that’d make a gallic Chuck Norris or Jack Bauer or Audie Murphy sit up at attention, and jump-start the cold, post-ironic heart of the most cynical Sorbonne academic trash.  It makes me marginally less ashamed of my family’s own partly Quebecois roots.

It was the first time I’d seen this song delivered outside of a fundamentally American context – which I can also not stop humming, by the way, although I guess that’s fairly obvious, since it’s the same song…

Anyway – Vive le cul-coups de pied!

Over at MDE, Luke Hellier is stepping down and moving on, and turning the blog over to Andy Post and Ryan Lyk.

Thanks for a lot of great blogging, Luke – and welcome, Andy and Ryan!

Good news: the FBI has arrested a Somali teen for attempting to blow up a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland Oregon.

Unfortunately, I can’t figure out whether Mohammed Muhammed, the alleged bomber, is  an anti-tax terrorist, or a pro-second-amendment kind of terrorist, or pro-life terrorists, or one of the anti-gay-marriage kind of terrorists?

How does the President and Secretary Napolitano expect us to fight terror if they won’t tell us what kind of domestic terror was involved?

If I were the President of Harvard University, I might wanna have a word with Matt Yglesias.

Matt – a prominent leftyblogger who’s gone on to write for a bunch of liberal rags – has a BA from Harvard.  Like a lot of leftybloggers, he profited from the leftyblog audience’s hive mentality and got promoted far beyond even his Peter Principle value, to say nothing of his actual perception.

And it’s gotta be undercutting the value of that expensive Harvard sheepskin.  Especially when he’s writing bilge like this, about planning ahead for the new GOP majority in Congress:

But the specific thing I would worry about isn’t gutting of health care legislation or endless investigations. It’s the economy. Anne Kornblut reports that the White House understands the basic political dynamic: “Even more important, senior administration officials said, Obama will need to oversee tangible improvements in the economy.”

So I know that tangible improvements in the economy are key to Obama’s re-election chances. And Douglas Hibbs knows that it’s key. And senior administration officials know that its key. So is it so unreasonable to think that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner may also know that it’s key? That rank and file Republicans know that it’s key? McConnell has clarified that his key goal in the Senate is to cause Barack Obama to lose in 2012 which if McConnell understands the situation correctly means doing everything in his power to reduce economic growth. Boehner has distanced himself from this theory, but many members of his caucus may agree with McConnell.

And Yglesias’ conclusion (emphasis added)?

Which is just to say that specifically the White House needs to be prepared not just for rough political tactics from the opposition (what else is new?) but for a true worst case scenario of deliberate economic sabotage.

Truly, truly dreadful.

The left; not only do they believe their ends justify their means, they believe everyone else believes it too.

They warned me that if I voted Conservative, dissent would be viewed as treason.

And they were right; according to Whoopi, speaking out against intrusive searching is “an act of terrorism”:

Via Rob Port.

David Harsanyi notes that it’s not just the Who0per:

Not so long ago, the left positioned itself as the defender of innocents against the Bush administration’s war on terror, which was “just one tiny step away from fascism.” The Constitution was sacred, especially when we faced danger — and even more especially when a Republican was president.

It is a little galling that the left likely would have upheld accused terrorists’ Islamic scruples against full-body scanning…

It was not long ago that Democrats were regularly quoting Thomas Jefferson, who never actually said that “those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” (Every nanny-state initiative in existence exempted, of course.)

Yet today, left-wing pundits, typified by syndicated liberal columnist Ruth Marcus, implore Americans to grow up, become better automatons, get moving and submit. The admired liberal columnist Michael Kinsley first offers us tales of TSA kindheartedness and then tells us the same.

Many left-wing publications that cautioned us against George W. Bush’s ham-fisted intrusions now defend Barack Obama’s ham-fisted intrusions.

Modern liberals.  I’m not saying they support authoritarian dictatorship.  But they are the kind of people any would-be dictator needs to have around to take control.

Genetic evidence found in Iceland that the Norse actually were in North American 1,000 years ago:

Pity poor Leif Ericsson. The Viking explorer may well have been the first European to reach the Americas, but it is a certain Genoan sailor who gets all the glory. Thanks to evidence that has until now consisted only of bare archeological remains and a bunch of Icelandic legends, Ericsson has long been treated as a footnote in American history: no holiday, no state capitals named after him, no little ditty to remind you of the date of his voyage.

I blame the mob.

But a group of Icelandic and Spanish scientists studying one mysterious genetic sequence – and one woman who’s been dead 1,000 years – may soon change that.

Ten years ago, Agnar Helgason, a scientist at Iceland’s deCODE Genetics, began investigating the origin of the Icelandic population. Most of the people he tested carried genetic links to either Scandinavians or people from the British Isles. But a small group of Icelanders – roughly 350 in total – carried a lineage known as C1, usually seen only in Asians and Native Americans. “We figured it was a recent arrival from Asia,” says Helgason. “But we discovered a much deeper story than we expected.” (From the Archives: See TIME’s cover story on the Vikings.)

Helgason’s graduate student, Sigridur Sunna Ebenesersdottir, found that she could trace the matrilineal sequence to a date far earlier than when the first Asians began arriving in Iceland. In fact, she found that all the people who carry the C1 lineage are descendants of one of four women alive around the year 1700. In all likelihood, those four descended from a single woman. And because archeological remains in what is Canada today suggest that the Vikings were in the Americas around the year 1000 before retreating into a period of global isolation, the best explanation for that errant lineage lies with an American Indian woman: one who was taken back to Iceland some 500 years before Columbus set sail for the New World in 1492.

Skål!

The Northern Alliance Radio Network will be a best-of today; we’ll be observing Thanksgiving.

Enjoy the holiday, and see you next weekend!

Some of my liberal readers have been asking what I think about the Tom Hackbarth story.

My response; I can’t think much, since there’s really not much story. KSTP-TV’s piece reads, pretty much in its entirely:

State Rep. Tom Hackbarth was carrying a pistol when he told St. Paul Police he was jealous and looking for his girlfriend.

Officers took the gun from him calling his behavior “borderline terroristic.”

We’ll come back to what the police said and, more importantly, did.

The House GOP leadership reacted quickly and, under the circumstances, appropriately, suspending Hackbarth from his slated committee chairmanship for the next sessoin pending some sort of resolution.

Now, predictably, the regional leftymedia is in full dudgeon over this story.  As is their wont, they are filling in the blanks with a whoooole lot of innuendo, supposition, and flat-out fantasy.

As PJ O’Rourke once said, “I’m not a liberal, so I’m not an expert at stuff I know nothing about”.   I’m not going to pretend to have answers.  Indeed, all I have are questions.

Everything Is Stalking:  The accusations against Hackbarth aren’t all that clear; he was accused of “stalking-like” behavior by the always-articulate Saint Paul Police Department.  No charges have been filed.

That last bit is rather vital; no charges have been filed.

Remember – in the world of domestic law, including “abuse”, “domestic violence”, “stalking” and the like, men are considered guilty until proven innocent.  If the police had had anything beyond suspicion, they’d have come up with something.

Was Hackbarth doing something inappropriate?  It’s possible.  Very, very possible.  Hackbarth is separated, after 25 years of marriage.  Being “separated” is an emotional Cuisinart set on “mangle”;  a lot of hitherto-buried emotions run very close to the surface; people do things that they’d never normally do in real life (and I’m pleading the Fifth Amendment at this point).

So what did Hackbarth do?  We don’t know; not at all, other than “not enough for the SPPD to charge him with anything at all“, but apparently enough to draw their interest.  We’ll come back to that, too.

That complete lack of known facts hasn’t stopped the regional leftyblog brain trust from jumping to conclusions like a bunch of synchronized Shamu clones at a rhetorical Sea World.

Conservatives – Guilty Until Proven Anything At All:  The City Pages’ Hart Van Denburg gets the “who, what (sort of), when, where, why and how”, in his piece on the incident – and still manages to squeedge in some innuendo to fill in the factual blanks:

Republican state Rep. Tom Hackbarth went looking for a date the other day in a Highland Park alley, with his Smith and Wesson .38 strapped to his waist.

Innuendo; as Ven Denburg himself notes elsewhere in his story, Hackbarth has a carry permit.  Connecting his “stalking” and carrying a gun is convenient, and connecting the two certainly fits the institutional left’s narrative about conservatives, shooters and social interactions.  But it’s an innuendo unsupported by any actual facts – like, say, arrests or charges or any indication of intent that’d link the two factoids.

Which takes us to innuendo number 2:

The Most Important Right Of All:  Van Denburg continued:

He chose an odd place to park his pickup truck, too: The Planned Parenthood clinic lot, where security cameras caught him on tape.

Saint Paul’s pro-abortion community has come to regard all of Ford Parkway as its private property.  While the building itself doesn’t jump out at you, once you do know what you’re looking for, it’s hard to escape the fact that there is more going on in the neighborhood than just a baby-disposal mill.  There are apartments, stores, the Highland Park library, houses…people all over the place.  Ford Parkway is not all about Planned Parenthood.

But you’d never know that from the leftymedia’s reaction.  Was “near the Planned Parenthood Clinic” an “odd” place to park, as Ven Denburg called it?  Or was it a place to park his pickup, that happened to be near Planned Parenthood?

A justifiably skittish guard at the Ford Parkway clinic called the cops to report an unidentified man carrying a gun on the property. No surprise there.

More innuendo.  “Justifiably” skittish?  Planned Parenthood’s “justifiable” skittishness has led to a “justifiable” suspension of large chunks of the First Amendment within eye-and-earshot of the clinics in Saint Paul and elsewhere around the country.  And now, apparently, the Second Amendment as well; being seen with a firearm that is legal and permitted under Minnesota law “justifies” Planned Parenthood’s rent-a-cops calling in the heat?

What other civil liberties does Planned Parenthood get to selectively excise?

Worse, naturally, are the “Feminist” bloggers.  “Red Sonya” from the always-incontinent Shakespeare’s Sister tries Hackbarth and finds him guilty based on…well, you guessed it, more innuendo:

Who the hell decides that, after meeting someone for coffee, you are immediately entitled—nay, obligated—to make sure that she’s not with another man?! Oh, stalkery entitled douchebags with unchecked privilege and no sense of boundaries who believe that women are their property and have no respect for their autonomy, that’s who!

Perhaps.

Or people (male and female – it swings both ways pretty equally) whose senses of boundaries are temporarily (one hopes) warped by their current circumstances.

Or both.  We don’t know – because “Red’s” take is based entirely on filling in the factual blanks with a whole lot of PC filler.

While stalking is frightening enough, the loaded gun makes this even scarier. Hackbarth does have a permit for concealed carry, so his actions weren’t illegal.

Buuuuuuut…

But since he began his controlling behavior immediately after meeting this woman, I’m skeptical of his ability to shrug off this event—and, from his twisted perspective, her “lie”—without having a douchetantrum of massive proportions.

What a wonderful world, where people can issue the binding diagnosis of “douchetantrumitis” (let me check the DSM-IV for that one) while knowing zero facts whatsoever.

When guys like this escalate, altercations easily become fatal with the addition of a loaded gun to the mix.

And they much more easily don’t.

Look – it goes without saying that stalking – or even just being excessively clingy after less than a whole lot of dates – is a bad thing.  And it doesn’t excuse any bad behavior to add “don’t discount the weirdness that comes with the whole emtional bumper-car ride that goes along with divorce, because everyone reacts differently, and most everyone does something that they’ll wind up regretting one way or another, whether it’s getting married to the first person you sleep with or blowing all your money on strippers maybe just having a real hard time getting used to the differing expectations people have in the dating world after being off the market for most of three decades”.   Readjusting to single life can be a real bitch.

[Side note to conservative grownups in the audience; watch some idiot leftyblogger take that last sentence and run a post entitled “Berg Excuses Stalking”, ignoring that bit at the front where I said “It doesn’t excuse bad behavior…”.  It’s pretty much inevitable – Ed.]

The Victorian Vapours:  Oh, yeah – Hackbarth had a gun.  After his run-in with the SPPD, it was confiscated.  And then, after all was said and done, he got it back.

But the presence of a firearm – especially in the hands of a conservative, anti-abortion Republican who is engaged in liberal innuendo-fodder – acts on leftybloggers and lefty journalists like a green-and-yellow cape does on a Vikings fan.

The normally sensible David Brauer left a comment in a Facebook thread:

[O]f course, it seems like creepy potentially violent stalking, but then again, these gun dudes carry their pieces around everywhere. it’s like their wallet. and of course, he was in scary, scary Highland. It’s no Cedar, Mn!

Well, doy.  It doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have it with you when you need it.

And check out the leftyblogs (rhetorically, mind you – don’t actually read then) for the number of references to the fact that the revolver was “fully loaded”.   Huh?  You’d carry an empty gun?  To what – butt-whip a robber?  Or a half-loaded one?  For what – impromptu games of Russian Roulette?

Grrr. I’m sorry.  Dumb people bug me.

Oh, yeah – let me reiterate; he got the gun back when the episode was over.  Which may not be any sort of testimony to Hackbarth’s alleged actions or state of mind, but it is a pretty good sign that he did nothing remotely illegal – and that’d be in an area of law where telling a woman that those pants do make her butt look bigger is fifth-degree domestic assault, a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and a $10K fine.

(The above sentence is intended as satire.  The first idiot leftyblogger – and I’ll stipulate that that isn’t entirely a redundant phrase – that tries to run that into “Berg advocates stalking and makes light of domestic violence” will both incur my disinterested wrath and be lying, anyway.  Just don’t go there).

Berg’s Seventh Law?:  Remember – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.  The leftymedia is romping and playing with the Hackbarth story because somewhere out there there is a video of a DFL legislator standing outside an elementary school in full S&M garb, bellowing expletives at a first-grade teacher that spurned his advances, waving a katana.

No, I can’t prove it.

Any more than any of the innuendoids above can prove any of their stuff.

But it’s a law, after all.

UPDATE: Welcome, “Developers are Crabgrass” readers.

Which is sort of like saying “hey, look at all the leptons”.  Both of them are at present largely hypothetical, abstruse constructs.

Oh, yeah – read my piece above.  Zaetsch is lying, as usual.  The guy wouldn’t know “factual” if “factual” spiked his Metamucil.  Read my actual post – something Zaetsch, or whomever sent him the link, clearly didn’t do – and decide for yourself.

Better yet, leave a comment and engage in the discussion.  If you’re used to the level of conversation over at all the blogs that are part of the “Stillwater Asylum” – “Lloydletta”, “The Dump”, “Crabgrass” and wherever Bremer is ranting and whatever pseudonym Weiner us using these days – you’ll find things are a whooooole lot more rational here; you have to bring some intellectual game, in a way you’re not used to .  Give it a shot!

A sign of the times – Finnish-Americans voted heavily Republican for the first time:

Around 100 years ago Finnish immigrants flocked to the mines and woods of the country around Lake Superior, where the topography and weather must have seemed familiar. They’ve been a mostly Democratic, sometimes even radical voting bloc ever since. No more, it seems. Going into the election, the three most Finnish districts, Michigan 1, Wisconsin 7 and Minnesota 8, all fronting on Lake Superior, were represented by two Democratic committee chairmen and the chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, with a total of 95 years of seniority.

Wisconsin’s David Obey and Michigan’s Bart Stupak both chose to retire, and were replaced by Republicans who had started running before their announcements. Minnesota’s James Oberstar was upset by retired Northwest pilot and stay-at-home dad Chip Cravaack.

So here’s a new rule for the political scientists: As go the Finns, so goes America.

Obama must feel like he’s in a sauna right about now…

Until maybe the mid-eighties, “terror target” and “Israel” were more or less synonymous – going back hundreds of years, reaching a peak over the past seventy years or so. 

In response, the State of Israel has become very punctilious about learning the who, what, where and why of terror.  It is a matter of individual and national survival, for a people that spent the middle of the Twentieth Century being shot, starved, gassed and burned nearly out of existence in what Helen Thomas called their homeland.

To Israelis, it’s serious business.

To Americans, it’s part ritual, and part make-work program.  We’ve been subjected to three serious terror attacks on our own soil.  One, the first World Trade Center bombing, failed due to its conspirators’ incompetence and, I’d like to think, the providence of a merciful God.  One – Oklahoma City – was the work of a pair of solitary madmen, or so says our government. And of course, September 11. 

Other attacks – the shoe-bomber, the underwear bomber – failed due to incompetence, possibly caused by the part of countererrorism we do well; going overseas and finding the professionals and killing them, forcing terrorists to go with the red-shirt squad for going after the US.  Still others – Fort Hood, the murder in Little Rock – were relatively (!) small-scale, apparently-spontaneous outbursts. 

We’ve been able to afford to skate on “airport security” that exists more to serve as a bureaucratic feel-good – like “Zero Tolerance” policies – while conforming to current fashions in political correctness – because a generation of terrorist A-squads were killed in Iraq, are laying low and watching the sky in Pakistan or Afghanistan, are holed up in the jungles of Indonesia and the Philippines listening for out-of-place twig snaps, or are sitting in Guantanamo fielding residual offers from Oliver Stone.

There’ll be more.  There always are.   And this past month’s uproar over the Transportation Security Administration’s intrusive-yet-useless groping of random Americans has prompted the conscientious to ask “how do countries with real commitments to keeping travel safe do it?

Jeff Dunetz, er, profiles security, Israeli-style.

I’ll start with the conclusion:

As the United States defends against the ever expanding threat of Muslim terror, right here on our home turf, success depends on throwing off the shackles of political correctness and adopting the methods of our ally Israel.

However the US is stuck in what seems to be an irreversible and deadly policy of treating everyone the same., even though we are all individuals and very different. The ultimate result is an airport security process that gives you a choice of being abused by a machine or the groping hands of an untrained TSA agent. The present TSA policies put passengers and the X-Ray appliances that reveal their bare bodies in the same category as they are both treated like machines.

During her 62 year fight against terror, Israel has achieved a balance between protection of civil liberties and the prevention of violence. Her decision was that the sanctity of saving human lives and preserving personal dignity, outweighs the targeting and possible inconvenience of the extra questioning of a few.

One key difference?  The goal of Israeli security is very different than that of the TSA’s inspection:

The real difference between the Israeli and American approach is the target. Israel tries to identify and stop the terrorist while the U.S. targets the bomb or other weapon. This approach does not change whether there is a left or right wing Prime Minister in power because the government realizes for Israel, the fight against terrorism is a fight for its very survival. Thus her government and citizenry have a view of preventing terrorism that is unencumbered by the political correctness which restrains efforts in the United States.

The ISA (Israeli Security Agency) calls it “human factor.” Some part of that human factor would cause Al Sharpton to show up to picket the Airport if it was practiced in the US. Ethnic profiling of passengers plays a central role in Israel’s multi-level approach. Not just ethnicity is profile, race religion, general appearance and behavior are also part of the information used to profile. And wherever that profile is being made, no matter what country it is being made in, it is an Israeli doing the profile.

While this past month of public, crowd-sources scrutiny has uncovered numerous stories of TSA incompetence and depravity, I’ll resist the urge to jump on the bandwagon of calling TSA staffers universal incompetents because they are low-wage government employees with little, and indifferent training.  I know a few TSA people, and know them to be genuinely concerned with security.

I also know a few people who are genuinely interested in first aid; I wouldn’t let them take out my kids’ appendixes:

There are other differences, most importantly is that you don’t just come off the street and get a job with the ISA (Israel Security Agency). These security agents are all ex-military (as most of the country is) and they are selected based on their intelligence and their ability to behavior profile.

Read the whole thing; it includes excellent insights on Israeli “profiling” and the techniques they use.

And remember it the next time you “fly”.

According to the Strib, Voter ID is just not needed…

…according to a survey of people who’d have to work harder if it were implemented…

…conducted by two groups that benefit from inflated vote counts.

Minnesota does not need a law requiring photo identification at the polls because there have been relatively few cases of ineligible voting, two advocacy groups said Monday.

Citing data collected from county attorneys from the 2008 election, the two groups said that there were 26 convictions statewide of felons voting illegally – a figure representing 0.0009 percent of voters that year.

It’s a figure that also represents investigations in Ramsey, and only Ramsey, County.  The only county for which the Minnesota has done the County Attorneys’ jobs by doing all the investigating for them.

Allegations of felons voting represented 77 percent of voter fraud investigations, the groups said. The other 23 percent of the investigations from the 2008 election – which did not lead to any convictions – involved charges of non-citizens voting, double voting, voting outside of jurisdiction and impersonating a voter, the groups said.

Right.  That’s because under Minnesota law, pleading ignorance of the law is enough to get you acquitted.  Only paroled felons have to sign a form stating they know they’re not supposed to vote.

The study was conducted by Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance. The groups said the study was based on responses from 71 of the state’s 87 counties.

The “Center for Election Integrity of Minnesota“?  Sure sounds like an important group!

The Strib doesn’t see fit to mention that “CEIMN” is an offshoot of “non-partisan” liberal pressure group “Common Cause MN” (check out CC of MN’s and CEIMN’s addresses), whose motto is “Holding Power Accountable”, and which spent the 2010 election demanding accountability of conservative groups while ignoring the rafts of liberal special interest money.  They favor rationing speech to regular Americans, but exaggerating the influence of unions and liberal special interests.

One wonders if Strib reporter Mike Kaszuba didn’t feel this was relevant, or if he just didn’t know.

Science has known for quite some time that conservatives, by most measures, are happier than liberals, earn more, and have better sex lives. The building blocks for a happier life are all there.

But why?

Dennis Prager has some ideas.

The unhappy gravitate toward the left… Life is hard for liberals, and life is hard for conservatives. But conservatives assume that life will always be hard. Liberals, on the other hand, have utopian dreams. At his brother Robert’s funeral, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy recalled his brother saying: “Some men see things as they are and say ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?'”

Utopians will always be less happy than those who know that suffering is inherent to human existence. The utopian compares America to utopia and finds it terribly wanting. The conservative compares America to the every other civilization that has ever existed and walks around wondering how he got so lucky to be born or naturalized an American.

The liberal in Minnesota grouses himself into incontinence over LGA cuts,  and works himself into a froth over how much “Better” a Minnesota we’d have if everyone else was just paying more money.

Third, imagine two Americans living in essentially identical socioeconomic conditions. Both earn $45,000 a year, both have the same amount of debt on their homes and both have the same number of dependents. One seeks governmental assistance wherever possible; the other eschews any governmental help. Which one is likely to be the liberal and which one is likely to be the happier individual?

This is not a question only an oracle can answer. The one who yearns for governmental help is the one who is likely to be both liberal and less happy. Conservatism, which demands self-reliance, makes one happier. The more one feels that he is captain of his or her ship (as poor as that ship may be), the happier he or she will be.

Read the whole thing.  If you’re a Lib, try not to hurt yourself.

Joe Doakes, from Saint Paul’s Como neighborhood, has been looking into Saint Paul’s new proposed budget. 

And he emails:

In this time of economic trouble, when families are tightening their belts and doing with less, it’s refreshing to see that at least some of our loyal public servants know where their priorities lie . . . in their own pockets.

I’m depressingly un-surprised.

Proposed property tax statements are available on-line from the County’s website. [Joe looked at] samples from the Como-Northdale area; Newell Park; and University Ave area (Charles and Simpson).

Values dropped in all samples.

Taxes rose in all samples.

They’re happy to make you pay for A Better Minnesota, even if your little corner of Minnesota is just plain worse.

The County and City mostly held the line (not really, since the City intentionally adopted a Blackmail Budget which assumes fully funded LGA that won’t happen – the City’s tax increases will come later).

Bingo.  It’s one of those DFL patterns of behavior that is very, very close to becoming another Berg’s Law; DFL city governments will always use the city budget in such a way as to exert pressure for DFL priorities. 

“Vote DFL so that the state gives us more money, or we’ll pass the taxes directly on to you.” 

The school district, though, saw fit to raise the levy. And not just a bit, like 5% across the board.

I didn’t get a 5% raise this year, did you?

Pffft.

Yesterday’s ruling at the SCOM sums up about like this:  Bureaucrats trump legislators.

Gary at LFR puts it well:

When bureacrats’ ruling has more bearing on election law than legislators and governors, then it’s clear that bureaucrats have overstepped their authority. The minute that happens, the legislature needs to step in and limit the bureaucrats’ authority.

Hopefully, the new GOP legislators are writing that legislation as I’m writing this post. We pay legislators to write laws. We don’t pay administrative law judges to tell us that existing law isn’t relevant. Also, we don’t pay Supreme Court justices to write new law. Theoretically, we pay appellate court justices to tell us what the law says. PERIOD.

It disturbs me, personally, how frequently “administrative law” – law as interpreted by bureaucrats – overrides the law as passed by elected representatives of the people.

The worst example I’ve seen remains the City of Saint Paul’s administrative lynching of “Saint Paul Firearms”, a gun shop that briefly opened on Snelling Avenue.  The store obeyed all applicable laws – exceeded them, at least in terms of security, in every particular – but some of the religiously DFL-voting neighbors got the victorian vapors over the thought of sharing the neighborhood with a gun store.

So they didn’t bother with real courts; they went to the “Administrative Law” court.  And they got the ruling they wanted; the ruling that said “forget Minnesota law, to say nothing of the United States Constitution; bureaucrats see it the way you want to see it!”  And so the store was forced to close, destroying an honest entrepreneur’s investment of his life’s savings in the process.

I’m n0 lawyer – I have some standards – so I frankly don’t know what to think about the SCOM’s ruling yet.  It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve sided unconscionably with the bureaucrats against, y’know, the law.

We’ll see.

Gary Gross’ Let Freedom Ring is six years old (yesterday); sorry I missed the big day!

Hours after the Minnesota Vikings announced the firing of head coach Brad Childress,  the team’s former defensive coordinator and now interim head coach uttered probably the dumbest, and sadly quite common cliche a sports personality can.

Leslie Frazier said the Vikings are a better football team than their 3-7 record

Uh, coach, it’s the games and the results thereof that, in fact, determine how good – or in this case bad – you are. That’s sort of the point of playing other teams, keeping track of the results, and ultimately promoting the better teams to the playoffs and beyond.

You are precisely as good as your win/loss record. There is no other measure.

Unless, there is a community service allowance we’re not aware of and that might be traded in for say a 5-5 record?

[checks the NFL rule book]

Nope. Sorry.

Maybe next year you will be a better team. How will we know?

You’ll win more games.