I’m going to depart from my usual impeccably high standards to indulge in a little pure speculation.

How could Emmer win the recount?

It’s worth asking – largely because the Dayton Campaign and the media keep repeating so long, loud and stridently that it’s not.  Dayton ran a purely vaporous campaign of absolutely no substance – but he spent three times as much as Tom Emmer did to do it.   The main underlying message of the entire campaign was “Dayton Is Inevitable, Resistance Is Futile”.   We saw how that turned out; an 8,000 vote margin, around four tens of a percent.  The campaign is continuing, of course, with the DFL calling in its markers with the media to take up the chant that “Dayton Is Inevitable!”.

And his odds look prettty good, naturally. 

But it’s by no means airtight.

Here’s one way it ends with an Emmer win.

There were about 2.1 million votes cast for Governor this year, with Dayton getting about 919,000 and Emmer getting 910,000 along with about 250,000 throwaway votes (I’m looking at you, “Independence” Party).

In 2008,  the Minnesota Majority claimed that there were over 40,000 “overvotes” in Minnesota.  Secretary of State Ritchie responded in his department’s defense that the figure was closer to 30.000, although he really wasn’t very sure.

That’s means there were a little over one percent more ballots than signatures at polling stations.

Let’s say that we had about the same number this year; let’s take  Ritchie at his word, and call it 30,000 votes.

Let’s say the overvotes were concentrated in Hennepin, Ramsey and Saint Louis counties.  For purposes of rough, hypothetical numbers, let’s say virtually all of them did. 

If the reconcilation process goes as it’s supposed to, then precincts with overvotes will be required to remove random ballots from the stack until the number of ballots gets down to the number of signatures.

For purposes of roughing out some numbers, let’s say that 10% of the randomly-selected votes are for throwaway candidates.  That leaves about 27,000 votes. 

Dayton won Hennepin, Ramsey and Saint Louis counties by nearly a 2:1 margin.   Let’s say that ratio holds among the votes discarded during reconciliation.  That means Dayton loses 18,000 votes, and Emmer loses about 9,000. 

Which gives Emmer a margin of victory of just under 1,000 votes, before we get into dealing with undercounted military absentee ballots.

Within the realm of possibility?  We shall see.

While I wrote about Steve Van Zandt’s (better known a “Miami Steve”, “Little Steven” and “Silvio Dante”) birthday on this date a year ago, I’ve been getting reminders that he turns sixty today.

Happy Birthday, Miami!

We’ve been discussing the MPR/Humphrey Institute and Minnesota polls for the past two weeks.  Indeed, it’s been one of the ongoing “go to” subjects of this blog for almost eight years now.

Why?

Because while  the polls themselves are risible, they have an effect on elections in Minnesota.

Part of it is in terms of people – “undecided”, “independent” voters – going to the polls at all.  I’ve related on this blog several stories of people who’ve pondered not going to the polls this past year.  Part of it was  because of the overwhelming negativity about Tom Emmer portrayed by the media – negativity, partly driven by the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota’s long, Dayton-family-funded, largely dubiously-factual smear campaign, but pushed hard in the media via the “polling” that they, themselves, commissioned.

Larry Jacobs at the Hubert H. Humphrey (HHH) Institute is the most over-quoted person in the Twin Cities media.  And during the campaign, Jacobs was seen as relentlessly as always in the Twin Cities media, flogging the Humphrey Institute’s polling first during the primaries (where the HHH’s polls showed Dayton with a crushing lead even though Dayton won the primaries by a margin not a whole lot bigger than the one we currently have in the governor’s race) and, finally, during the run-up to the election when the HHH poll showed Dayton winning with a 12 point blowout.

We’re still working on the recount for the 0.4% race.

Jacobs defended the poll (quoted in LFR):

JACOBS: Well, you know, a poll is nothing more than a snapshot in time. We’ve begun the interviewing nearly 2 weeks before election day. Barack Obama visited and we talked openly about the fact that this would likely change. There are, of course, all kinds of other factors that happened at the end, including the fact the almost 1 out of 5 undecided voters in our poll started to make up their mind.

The other thing to remember is that there were alot of other polls being conducted that showed the race closing at the time, something we were watching at the time, also.

That’s right, Dr. Jacobs.  There were a lot of other polls.

And except for the HHH and Minnesota polls, all of them showed a “snapshot in time” that was something close to the reality that eventually emerged on election day.

All of them.

So what?

Because opinion polling has an inordinate effect on media coverage and, less directly, the money and effort that people put into campaigns.

As to the media?  The New York Times has absorbed Nate Silver’s “Five Thirty Eight” stats-blog for its election polling coverage.  And throughout the race, the Times ran with the idea that Dayton was overwhelmingly likely to win.

And that supposition was based entirely on a statistical tabulation of opinion poll results.  And the stats were heavily based on the Minnesota and Humphrey polls, especially through the middle of the race, when the tone of the campaign was being set.  All together, the crunching of the opinion poll numbers led Silver to claim the stats showed Minnesota would be a convincing 6.6 point victory for Dayton; since political statistics are an essentially weaselly “science”, Silver also ran with an eight point margin of error.

Naturally, the media ran with the 6.6 points; a little less with the margin of error.

Now, there’s some media attention – the Minnpost, the City Pages – to the ludicrous nature of the polls.  Jacobs:

“If a shortcoming is identified, we will fix it. If not, we will have third-party verification that our methods are sound.”

Dr. Jacobs:  take it from this third party; it’s flawed.  Flawed to the point of illegitimacy.

More on the Minnesota Poll later…

———-

\The series so far:

Monday, 11/8: Introduction.

Wednesday, 11/10: Polling Minnesota – The sixty-six year history of the Strib’s Minnesota Poll. It offers some surprises.

Friday, 11/12: Daves, Goliath:  Rob Daves ran the Minnesota Poll from 1987 ’til 2007.  And the statistics during that era have a certain…consistency?

Monday, 11/15: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers!:  The Humphrey Institute has been polling Minnesota for six years, now.  And the results are…interesting.  In the classic Hindi sense of the term.

Wednesday, 11/17: Close Shaves: Close races are the most interesting.  For everyone.  Including you, if you’re reading this series.

Monday, 11/22: The Hay They Make: So what does the media and the Twin Cities political establishment do with these numbers?

Wednesday, 11/24: A Million’s A Crowd:  Attention, statisticians:  Raw data!  Suitable for cloudsourcing!

The story was presented without comment – three Minnesota county attorneys “blasted” the Emmer campaign and  GOP’s  request for vote reconciliation, the process which is required by state law which we discussed last week.

Hennepin County election officials argued that being forced to undertake a count of voter signatures, as Republicans want, would “add confusion, delay, and uncertainty in the service of an exceedingly suspect goal of randomly removing properly cast ballots of fully eligible voters.”

That’d be the Hennepin County Attorney’s office run by former DFL gubernatorial hopeful Mike Freeman.

Ramsey County officials called the GOP argument “fundamentally flawed” and based on “obsolete” information.

That’d be the Ramsey County attorney’s office, run by former DFL gubernatorial hopeful Susan Gaertner.

In Hennepin County, auditor Jill Alverson told the court that “randomly disenfranchising eligible voters after the fact is a statutory remedy that should be used only in the narrowest of circumstances and then only after careful, transparent and deliberate study.”

Other than that whole it’s the freaking law business, anyway.

I just have to ask…why?

The Minnesota School Board Association is advising school districts across the state to expand their harassment and violence policy to specify several more groups, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) students.

What does it matter for what a student is being “bullied?”

Shouldn’t they add even more groups then?

Short. Tall. Fat. Skinny. Bespectacled.

I was teased for being a “carrot top” in elementary school. Shouldn’t “Individuals with Red or Auburn Hair” be added in case teasing escalates to bullying?

…its that they are bloated and inefficient too, and surprisingly, at least for now, airports can tell them, the TSA, to leave.

Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead. The push is being led by a powerful Florida congressman who’s a longtime critic of the Transportation Security Administration and counts among his campaign contributors some of the companies who might take the TSA’s place.

And it’s not just because of the national attention that their roaming hands are garnering on the news and on the web.

“I think we could use half the personnel and streamline the system,” Mica said Wednesday, calling the TSA a bloated bureaucracy.

the top executive at the Orlando-area’s second-largest airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, said he plans to begin the process of switching to private screeners in January

“I am a frequent air traveler and I have experienced … TSA agents who have let the power go to their head,” Erickson said. “You can complain about those people, but very rarely does the bureaucracy work quickly enough to remove those people from their positions.”

Is this yet another sector that could be performed better, faster, cheaper than by the government?

Kevin Dujan writes Hillbuzz, and vexes the Cocktail Party GOP.

Michael Brodkorb is with the Minnesota GOP.

The Minnesota Fallen Heroes Calendar. It’s $10, and benefits Fisher House.  You can also get it at the Fort Snelling chapel after services on Sundays.

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

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is on assignment today.  I’ll be hosting from 1-3PM Central. We’ll be talking with Kevin Dujan from Hillbuzz about, well, the Hill buzz, and with former NARN cohost and state GOP deputy chair Michael Brodkorb about the recount.  Plus Pat Boyd talks about the Fallen Heroes Remembered calendar.  Almost too much show!
• The King Banaian Show! – Representative-elect King is still on hiatus  at AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

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

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

Join us!

(Title)

You mention “urban theorists”, and not a few conservatives roll their eyes and snort “…another ivory-tower wannabe slurper-at-the-public faucet”.  Not without considerable justification, mind you.

I’ll ask the conservative reader to suspend his/her instincts in re Joel Kotkin, a Stanford demographer whose demographic and economic theories acknowledge the reality that people operating in pursuit of their own enlightened self-interest will develop patterns of living and working that defy the efforts of utopian urban planners.

More – much more – on that as the next legislative session gets under way.

Kotkin’s latest big effort, from earlier this week, was in Forbes, and  covers California’s extended economic tailspin, and the rise of pro-business states like Texas, and the political currents behind both.

Perhaps you’ve heard – California is America’s Greece:

In the future, historians may likely mark the 2010 midterm elections as the end of the California era and the beginning of the Texas one. In one stunning stroke, amid a national conservative tide, California voters essentially ratified a political and regulatory regime that has left much of the state unemployed and many others looking for the exits.

California has drifted far away from the place that John Gunther described in 1946 as “the most spectacular and most diversified American state … so ripe, golden.”  Instead of a role model, California  has become a cautionary tale of mismanagement of what by all rights should be the country’s most prosperous big state. Its poverty rate is at least two points above the national average; its unemployment rate nearly three points above the national average.  On Friday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced yet again to call an emergency session in order to deal with the state’s enormous budget problems.

This state of crisis is likely to become the norm for the Golden State. In contrast to other hard-hit states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada, which all opted for pro-business, fiscally responsible candidates, California voters decisively handed virtually total power to a motley coalition of Democratic-machine politicians, public employee unions, green activists and rent-seeking special interests.

Exactly the sort of “solution” the DFL put before Minnesota in this past election…

In the new year, the once and again Gov. Jerry Brown, who has some conservative fiscal instincts [by Kotkin’s standards, naturally – Ed.] will be hard-pressed to convince Democratic legislators who get much of their funding from public-sector unions to trim spending. Perhaps more troubling, Brown’s own extremism on climate change policy–backed by rent-seeking Silicon Valley investors with big bets on renewable fuels–virtually assures a further tightening of a regulatory regime that will slow an economic recovery in every industry from manufacturing and agriculture to home-building.

Kotkin goes on to shred the Cali Dems’ current fairy tale – that “green jobs” will save the day.

Compare and contrast with the prototype pro-business big state, Texas:

Texas’ trajectory, however, looks quite the opposite. California was recently ranked by Chief Executive magazine as having the worst business climate in the nation, while Texas’ was considered the best. Both Democrats and Republicans in the Lone State State generally embrace the gospel of economic growth and limited public sector expenditure. The defeated Democratic candidate for governor, the brainy former Houston Mayor Bill White, enjoyed robust business support and was widely considered more competent than the easily re-elected incumbent Rick Perry, who sometimes sounds more like a neo-Confederate crank than a serious leader.

I read White’s bio and record in Houston, and I thought “what a wonderful world, Texas, where the the “lefty” candidate has not only a platform, but a record, to the right of the “Republcian” in California – or, for that matter, far enough to the right to make Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman yakk up their skulls”.

To be sure, Texas has its problems: a growing budget deficit, the need to expand infrastructure to service its rapid population growth and the presence of a large contingent of undereducated and uninsured poor people. But even conceding these problems, the growing chasm between the two megastates is evident in the economic and demographic numbers. Over the past decade nearly 1.5 million more people left California than stayed; only New York State lost more. In contrast, Texas gained over 800,000 new migrants. In California, foreign immigration–the one bright spot in its demography–has slowed, while that to Texas has increased markedly over the decade.

And the conclusions?

A vast difference in economic performance is driving the demographic shifts. Since 1998, California’s economy has not produced a single new net job, notes economist John Husing. Public employment has swelled, but private jobs have declined. Critically, as Texas grew its middle-income jobs by 16%, one of the highest rates in the nation, California, at 2.1% growth, ranked near the bottom. In the year ending September, Texas accounted for roughly half of all the new jobs created in the country.

I bring this up not  just to get you to read Kotkin’s whole piece – although I think you should – but to urge you to compare and contrast the competing visions facing Minnesota today.

Because Minnesotans today do face two starkly-different futures.  There’s the future presented to us by Mark Dayton, if he (heaven forfend) wins the recount, and there’s the one that the GOP majorities in both chambers have been sent to fight for.

Dayton’s vision is fundamentally the same as the one that led to Califorinia’s catastrophic decay; fat and happy public unions, high taxes, hostility to any real economy’s genuine strengths.  The GOP’s – if they do their job, and I’m here to say I’m not the only one who’s gonna make sure they do – is to shade things more toward the Texas model.

This next legislative session will see these two ideals battling like Godzilla and Mothra. 

Or maybe, given Mark Dayton’s fundamental weakness as a candidate and governor, like Godzilla and Andy Dick.

The other day, we ran the video of Joel Rosenberg’s encounter with Minneapolis Police sergeant Bill Palmer, along with some derisive catcalls at the City Pages’ “coverage” of the incident.

Joel is, I should add for those who don’t follow science fiction literature or Second Amendment law, both a science fiction writer and the author of the definitive concealed carry bibles for both Minnesota and Missouri (?). 

Among many other things.

The following is Part I of Joel’s account of his encounter with Sergeant Palmer.

———-
The Palmer Fiasco:  Part One:  Why Joel Isn’t A Criminal

By Joel Rosenberg

A few preparatory matters…

The Palmer Fiasco is only a small part of what’s going on. I could get into the malicious, false arrest of my wife the dismissal of the charges, once she and her lawyer made it clear that they weren’t interested in a plea, but her complete and total exoneration; and, last weekend, the reinstatement of the charges against her. I could get into the data practices requests I’ve been making, and Bill Palmer’s unlawful demand for money before he started to do his job. I could get into the connection to http://gangstrikefarce.com, and how I told Jesse Garcia of the Minneapolis Police Department that I had been working on a book on that, before I ran into a much, much bigger story.

But I’ll save that for another time, and just point whoever’s interested to http://familymatterii.com. There’s a lot going on. Leave it at that, for now.

In order to understand the crimes that Bill Palmer committed—that’s crimes, plural—you have to know a little law, both in statute, and in practice.

[Continued after the jump]

(more…)

But I’m almost tempted to start, just so I can join everyone else…

…in telling the TSA where they can shove their fingers.

Look – I know some TSA workers.  Not a few of them do sincerely care about security.

But the leadership is a huge, huge problem.

From the wayback machine, fifty ads that’d never get shown today.

The above may be the least objectionable to modern tastes.

Of course, things have swung way too far in the other direction; try to find an ad that doesn’t portray “Dad” as a moron anymore…

To: The New GOP Majority in the Legislature

From: Mitch Berg, once-bitten Conservative

Re: The 2011 Session Agenda

Dear GOP House and Senate Caucuses:

Congratulations on the big win two weeks ago.  

Now, we gotta talk.

You have a historic opportunity here; not only do you have the most power of any group of Republicans in recent Minnesota history, but you got there for all the right reasons – atop a swave of populist conservative discontent over the policies of Barack Obama and the Minnesota DFL.

Better still, even if we lose the recount, we’re up against a governor that’d be in a weak position even if he were Hubert H. Humprhey.  And Mark Dayton is no Hubert H. Humphrey.  I’ll be frankly amazed if we’re not reverring to “Governor Prettner-Solon” by 2014; in any case, you have the opportunity to drive this car.

So drive.

I’m just a schlemiel voter.  But since the holidays are coming up, I’d like to give you my legislative wish list.

Go Deep.  Tom Emmer ran on a zero-based budget promise.  It was a great idea; follow through on it.  Pass a budget – over the (rhetorically) dead bodies of the DFL left in the Legislature, if need be – that slashes the fat, initiates zero-based budgeting for the big entitlement programs, guts the pork, and holds the line on spending.  Freeze state worker employees’ salaries until the revenues start picking up (meaning all the rest of us are getting raises again).  

And then, let Dayton – or whomever – veto it. 

And pass it again, with just enough changes to make it fly.

And let him veto it again. 

And pass it again.

And let him veto it, and risk shutting down state government. 

Because the people who sent you to office aren’t the ones that are going to rebel over a government shut-down.

But the ones that sent Dayton to office – real or imagined?  They will.  So when that happens?  Dayton loses.

So do it.

Fix The Election System:  Adopt Voter ID; require some form of identification.  You know the drill – make identification safe, cheap and available – but require every voter to present an ID, and make sure that ID is enterered as part of their signing-in process.

And kill off vouching.  Now.

Wanna appear “bipartisan”?  Keep same-day voting.  With a valid, cross-referenceable ID.  Because if accessible same-day voting is what the DFL really wants, provided we can keep it accountable and fraud-proof, why not?

I don’t think that’s what they really value in same-day voting, but that’s just my opinion.  So far.

And if Dayton wants to get into a fight over the right to carry out invalid, fraudulent elections, so be it!  Let him veto that bill too! Let the DFL stand and fall, statewide, over the right to game the electoral system.

You have a huge opportunity here.  Let’s use it. 

That’s why we sent you there, after all.

UPDATE:  A highly-placed GOP source whom I will not name at the moment writes:

NO Photo ID until every name on the voter registration list is checked for citizenship. There are names on the list of people who are not citizens. They are supposed to be challenged: “Challenged: Citizenship” is stamped right next to their name. Make everyone who gets a voting photo ID card prove citizenship; make it a renewable card every 5 years; the renewal cannot be tied to a driver’s license renewal. The Dept. of Public Safety must clean up all citizenship issues: temporary (those who are supposed to have “status check” on their ids; permanent residents who are not citizens). MN Constitution requires citizenship to vote.

 Yes, eliminate vouching and eliminate same-day registration – zero compromise here…  

Yes, play hardball; show backbone; appeasement doesn’t work – the Dems will never appease – we hold the majority, use it.

Well, it was a rough draft. 

Like everything else on this blog.

The smaller story (from my admittedly and temporarily parochial perspective): lefty protests in Europe have much moo, little political cow:

Throw your Euro stereotypes out the window: Last weekend, a Greek government that has cut public-sector pay and lowered pensions won a clear victory in local elections. Despite strikes and violence, despite the fact that Greece’s debt is still growing and more cuts are coming, there will be a Socialist mayor of Athens for the first time in 24 years. (And, yes, in Greece, the Socialists favor budget cuts, and the conservatives oppose them.)

Nor are the Greeks alone. Last month, voters re-elected a Latvian government that cut public-sector workers’ pay by 50 percent. The British government coalition, which is also trying to eliminate benefits and cut spending, remains strangely popular, too. Although—contrary to my previous observation—London witnessed its first Continental-style, anti-austerity riot last week, there wasn’t much general enthusiasm for the protesters. Some of their leaders wound up denouncing the riots, and they haven’t hurt the government’s poll numbers yet, either.

It’s saying too much to call it a pattern, and it may well not be a permanent change: I’m sure there are plenty of European politicians who won’t survive their next encounter with the voters. But there is something in the air. It almost seems as if at least a few Europeans have actually drawn some lessons from the recent recession and accompanying turbulence in the bond markets. They have realized, or are about to realize, that their state sectors are too big.

So the takeaway: despite the left’s sturm und drang and immense fury, the people support conservative (by Eurozone standards) reforms.

I say that to set up what is (by my, again, parochial and situational standards) the big story; Target Corporation – the, er, “target” of an astroturf smear campaign over the summer after donating money to MNForward, a pro-business PAC – has seen same-store sales rise.

The left’s astroturf campaign – the boycotts,  the ofay little videos of planted DFL harpies cutting up their Target cards, the “flash mobs” of smug  jagoffs – all of it was a flop.

As we speak, the MNGOP is announcing that it plans to seek “reconciliation” of the state’s vote totals before the recount begins.

The DFL is going to spread a lot of, frankly, BS about this process.  Here are the facts.  For starters…:

It’s The Law: The DFL is going to portray this to the uniformed (which the media will do their best to ensure the entire state is) as a wholesale disenfranchisement of voters.

The simple fact is, it is the law.

Under Minnesota law, the vote totals and the total number of actual, identified voters – the registered voters that signed in at the polling station – are supposed to be “reconciled”, or  shown to be equal, by about six weeks after the election.  The deadline this year is December 15.

Naturally, Mark Ritchie has bobbled that job as badly as he has every other facet of his job as Secretary of State and chief executive of our election system.  In 2008, it took close to eight months for the reconciliation process to happen.

Which has potentially dire consequences, if you want a clean, accurate recount of an election.

We’ll come back to that.

How Reconciliation Works:  If  your precinct had 100 voters sign in, and there are 110 ballots, then ten ballots are picked out at random and discarded.

Really.  That’s the state law.

Now, you might say “but that disenfranchises the ten voters that got picked out of the pile”.  And there’s something to that.  But by another token the ten extra votes disenfranchise ten voters in and of themselves; if it happened through fraud, then ten legitimate voters were negated; if through administrative incompetence (because precinct election staff don’t know how to do simple things like tally numbers or test ballot-counters before the election), then those ten ballots are equally disenfranchised, not by decree of Tony Sutton or Tom Emmer, but under state law.

Stupid?  Maybe.  We’ll come back to that later.

So why bother?  Because there very well may be…

More Votes Than People: In 2008, the Minnesota Majority claimed that there were about 40,000 more votes cast than there were identified, signed-in voters in Minnesota.   Mark Ritchie – Minnesota’s Secretary of State – said in effect “No, no no!” – it was only somewhere under 30,000 votes.

That’s right.  Even Mark Ritchie, the chief executive of our electoral system, admitted that that out of a little over 2.75 million voters, there were nearly 30,000 more votes cast than there were identified, signed-in voters.  That’s a little over a percent of the entire voting pool.  Over one in a hundred.

That’s over double the margin between the candidates in this year’s governor race.

That’s an awful lot of votes that, at first glance – via incompetence or fraud, and it really doesn’t matter which at this point – seem to have no connection with real, signed-in humans that showed up at the polls.

By Minnesota law, this needs to be taken care of.  And it needs to be done before any recount takes place, to make sure that we’re dealing with real numbers, not inflated/mistake-driven/fraudulent ones.

Let’s make sure we re-iterate two things here:

1. Discrepancies may or may not be fraud, and it really doesn’t matter what the cause is, because…
2. Reconciliation is a legal requirement, regardless.

Are there more votes than identified, actual voters?  We don’t know yet.  And before we recount the votes for the office of this state’s chief executive, we need to find out.

If there is a surplus of voters, is it fraud? We don’t know – and in a sense, it’s irrelevant to the question.  Reconciliation is not a legal tactic; it is the law.

But the recount effort – led by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnusson – has noticed that there seems to be an…

Odd Pattern: There appear to be quite a number of precincts – concentrated in Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis Counties – where Tom Emmer grossly underperformed the rest of the GOP ticket, and Mark Dayton significantly overperformed the rest of the DFL’s floundering line-up.

There also are reportedly a very large number of ballots listing nobody but Mark Dayton.  As in someone went in to the polls, registered, stood in line…and filled in only Mark Dayton.  Nobody else.

So the law calls for reconciliation.  Let’s reconcile!

“What a stupid system!”: Perhaps, but you don’t get to pick and choose the laws you want to follow (unless you have really good lawyers and your opposition doesn’t; see OJ Simpson.  Or if you fight a legal battle with furious intensity and your opponent does not; see Al Franken vs. Norm Coleman).

Don’t like the law?  Change it.  Better yet, replace it – with a photo ID system by which poll staff can match real voters with real registrations.  And get rid of vouching, and maybe same-day registration.  Why shouldn’t voting, the  most important of our civil rights, be reserved for those who pay enough attention to voting to actually register in advance?

But that’s a discussion for another day.

When we left Monty Jensen, it was Friday, October 29.  He’d just seen a scene that disturbed him; supervisors from a Brainerd-area group home voting for their charges who, while they had the legal right to vote, didn’t seem to have much idea where they were or what they were doing (which, if I were much less sober and reflective than I am these days, I would say “makes them a perfect DFL constituency”.  But I am more sober and reflective these days).

Jensen chewed on what he’d seen overnight – and then took a shot in the dark.

“I called George Burton”, he says, referring to the Constitution Party candidate for Jim Oberstar’s seat.   Burton got Jensen in touch with the Minnesota Freedom Council, one of a small network of grassroots groups that is scrutinizing Minnesota’s election system.

Acting on their advice, Jensen started to work.  “About 10:30 Saturday morning (October 30), I looked up Don Ryan, the Crow Wing County attorney, in the phone book.   I tried him a couple of times, with no answer. ”

“Then I tried Ron Kaus, at the Minnesota Freedom Council.  I’d never heard of him in my life.  I spoke with him – and he got right on it.  They wanted all the information – and he asked me to meet at the courthouse and tell him  how everything went down.  When we got there, he asked me if he could record the conversation.  We didn’t talk for five minutes before the recording started; I told my story”.

Here’s the story, for those who missed it the first time:
Here’s part I of the video…:

…along with Part II…:

…and Part III.

Jensen recalls “We went through and did the video.  I was kinda on the hot seat.  And from there, we  started trying to do the investigation”.  He got some advice from Kaus;  “If you want this investigated, you need to do it as an affadavit; the complaint form will just get filed away”. 

So Jensen spent the weekend writing the complaint.  On Monday morning, he was ready to turn it in.

“On Monday morning, I brought four copies in.  The auditor notarized them, and kept one”.  Then, Jensen went to the County Attorney’s office.  “Being that it was Monday before election day…I handed it to him personally.  He said he didn’t know what he could do with the election the next day, so all the votes would count.  But he said they’d follow up with the investigation.”

Later on, Jensen said the County Attorney’s office called to say the Crow Wing County Sheriff’s office had assigned an investigator.  On Thursday, November 4 – two days after the election – Jensen met with that investigator for about 90 minutes.  “He stated that they’d been speaking with certain group homes, had a list of ballots turned in during the time frame, and had everything to back up the story”.

And that, for the most part, was the last Monty Jensen has heard from Crow Wing County.

———-

Toward the end of our conversation, Jensen reflected.  “The other day, I was talking with my girlfriend.  I asked “Am I crazy, or is something going on here?”

We’ll get the girlfriend’s answer straight from her, later this week.

In late 2008, Rahm Emanuel made famous the phrase “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste.” It was an unabashed entreaty to liberals frustrated by years of pent up designs to advance the socialization of America. Obama, Reid and Pelosi wasted no time while a stupefied citizenry watched the unfolding of a theretofore unimagined agenda.

Less than two years later another crisis has presented itself, the nature of which is surely an exception to Rahm’s axiom; a crisis within.

Within the party that is.

A handful of survivors of the electoral razing of the democratic party are not unlike those famous Japanese soldiers hiding in tunnels on remote isles months after V-J Day…

In 1944, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged from the dark recesses of the island on March 19, 1972.

Some liberal democrats are figuratively living on Lubang, off the grid, not recognizing that Americans have soundly rebuked the extreme leftist agenda inflicted on them.

Liberals made clear Tuesday what they want from the bipartisan deficit commission — more help for the poor and middle class and bigger corporate tax increases.

Americans made clear that what they want is for their government to get out of the way, to cease disincenting those that would otherwise be spending, borrowing and investing in ways that create jobs for everyone, especially for the poor and middle class.

Mathematically, you can’t increase taxes enough on corporations or the wealthy to make even the slightest dent in the deficit let alone the national debt.  Eventually, either by choice or by force, the federal government will have to cut spending and by extension, entitlements.

Moderate and conservative commission members, who compose the bulk of the panel, have been more circumspect. After co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson offered their proposal last week — focused 2 to 1 on spending cuts over tax increases — the commission’s three Republican House members tentatively welcomed their approach.

The Tea Party may have given rise to a Regressive Movement in America, where once and for all, a majority will press the federal government and those it has enslaved by decades of sedimentary entitlements to do more with less, across the board.

…but not without a fight from the hardy few on Lubang.

But liberals were outraged. They tend to favor activist government, help for the needy and higher taxes on wealth to pay for it. Moderates and conservatives are more inclined to reduce government services to cut government debt and are less willing to raise taxes.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said: “Democrats should fight loudly and clearly — because the public overwhelmingly wants Democrats to fight that fight.”

Not anymore Adam. The war is over. You can go home now.

It’s almost become a cliche, among conservative observers of Minnesota elections.  You’re supporting a Republican.  You know the race is close.  You can feel the race is close.

And the final Humprhey and Minnesota polls come out, and the DFLer leads by an utterly absurd margin – like this year’s Humphrey Institute Poll, which showed a 12 point race…

…which, two days later, came in a statistical dead heat, with much less than half a point separating the two candidates.

And yet the Minnesota and Humphrey Institute polls have their defenders.

———-

Remember the 2006 Senate race?  Mark Kennedy vs. Amy Klobuchar?

The Minnesota poll did pretty well, all in all.  The final Minnesota poll showed Mark Kennedy getting 34 points, to Amy Klobuchar’s 55.  The race ended up being 58.06 to just shy of 38.    The Minnesota poll showed both candidates doing a little worse than they eventually wound up doing – Klobuchar a little worse, in fact.

Defenders of the Minnesota Poll – media people and lefty pundits – chimed in.  “See?  The Minnesota poll is OK” or at the very least “The Minnesota Poll is an equal-opportunity incompetent”.

But if you’re a cynic – and when it comes to the Minnesota and Humphrey Polls, I most certainly am – the answer there is obvious; if you accept that the polls exist to help one party or another out of close jams (and let’s just say I think there’s a case to be made), then the real question is “how do the polls stack up when it really counts – during the close elections“?

I took a look at the Minnesota poll’s history with close races – Gubernatorial, Presidential and Senate races that ended up less than five points apart – over the past 66 years.   Since 1944 in these races – twenty of them – the DFL ended up getting 47.69% to the GOP’s 47.57% in the final elections.  The Minnesota Poll has shown the DFL getting 44.3% to 43.28% in the final pre-election poll.  Both numbers are very close, of course.  The Minnesota Poll has underrepresented Republicans by an average of 4.3 points, the DFL by 3.39.  So while the poll underrepresented Republicans in 14 of 20 races, it was by less than a point, on average.

But that’s over 66 years.  And if you recall from episode 1 of this series, the Minnesota Poll used to systematically undercount the DFL.  But long story short – looking at the poll’s entire history, things are fairly close.

When you look at the Rob Daves era at the Minnesota poll, though, things change.

In close races (<5 point final difference) during the Rob Daves era, the GOP has actually gotten a slightly higher average vote total – 46.77% to 46.48% – in actual elections.  But the final Minnesota Poll has shown the DFL outpolling the GOP 43.33% to 40.78%.    Republicans come up an average of six points light in the final Minnesota Poll before the election, with DFLer finishing a little over three points short – nearly a 2-1 margin in underrepresentation.

In other words, in close races the Minnesota Poll has shown the GOP doing six points worse than they actually did, compared to three points for the DFL.  And the average Minnesota Poll has shown the DFL leading the GOP, when in fact the races have been mixed, with move Republican winners than in the previous 20-odd years of Minnesota history.

If you are an idealist, you could think that  it’s just a statistical anomaly.  To which the cynic notes that of eight close races, the GOP has been undercounted by less than the DFL exactly once.

The cynic might continue that it’s entirely possible that the Minnesota Poll doesn’t systematically short Republicans in close elections.  But given that the poll shorts Republicans in races that end up less than five points apart by an average of considerablymore than five points, the cynic would ask “if the Minnesota Poll were designed to keep Republicans home from the polls out of pure discouragement, how would it be any different than what we have now?”

Well, it could look like the Humphrey Poll.

Because the Humprey Poll is worse.  Granted, it’s a smaller sample size – there’ve been four “close” races (2004 Presidential, and the 2006 Governor,  2008 Senate and 2010 Governor races, which were/are very close indeed).

But in those race, the DFL won by an average of 45.43% to 44.7% (most of the gap coming from the four-point 2004 Presidental race; the other three had/have tallies within a point in difference).   But the final HHH poll showed the DFL/Democratic candidate winning by an average of seven points – 42.5 to 35.75%.  The DFL, is underrepresented in the HHH’s final pre-election poll by just a shade under three points; GOP is underpolls its real-life results by an average of almost nine points.

It’s possible that this is an honest error.  It is possible that the Humphrey Institute really, really believes that they have a likely voter model that accurately reflects Minnesota.  Perhaps it even does; maybe Minnesota really is a land of people who answer “DFL” on polls but come racing over to the GOP on election day.  But again – if the Humphrey Institute intended to help the DFL and keep Republicans home, it’s hard to see what they’d do differently.

Especially given the media’s reaction to these polls.

More on Friday.

———-

The series so far:

Monday, 11/8: Introduction.

Wednesday, 11/10: Polling Minnesota – The sixty-six year history of the Strib’s Minnesota Poll. It offers some surprises.

Friday, 11/12: Daves, Goliath:  Rob Daves ran the Minnesota Poll from 1987 ’til 2007.  And the statistics during that era have a certain…consistency?

Monday, 11/15: Hubert, You Magnificent Bastard, I Read Your Numbers!:  The Humphrey Institute has been polling Minnesota for six years, now.  And the results are…interesting.  In the classic Hindi sense of the term.

Wednesday, 11/17: Close Shaves: Close races are the most interesting.  For everyone.  Including you, if you’re reading this series.

Friday, 11/19: The Hay They Make: So what does the media and the Twin Cities political establishment do with these numbers?

Monday, 11/22: A Million’s A Crowd:  Attention, statisticians:  Raw data!  Suitable for cloudsourcing!

Joel Rosenberg – firearms instsructor to the stars – has been involved in an ongoing kerfuffle with the City of Minneapolis.  And when I say “kerfuffle”, I mean “series of intricately interlocking kerfuffles” complex enough to warrant a book of their own (which one might expect Rosenberg, a science fiction writer with a long bibliography, to be working on).

Last month, he got into a kerfuffle – I guess it’d be a “sub-kerfuffle” in this case – with Minneapolis Police Department Sergeant William Palmer when he went to a pre-arranged interview with Palmer at the MPD headquarters.  He was carrying a number of handguns openly.

Here’s the video of the event (most of the action is right up front):

Now, “Erin Carlyle” at the City Pages – former alt-journalism powerhouse, now a glorified small-college newspaper – ht tackles the story in a way that’d do the late Twin Cities Reader’s Margarete Grebe proud in terms of pure incurious superfluity.

Because besides the names of the people involved and the location of the incident, Carlyle gets pretty much everything wrong:

Joel Rosenberg tried to bring a gun into the Minneapolis Police headquarters and the cops wouldn’t let him.

Now Rosenberg is accusing the cop who took his gun of assault.

Er, yeah. We’ll come back to that.

Earlier this month, Rosenberg, who says he is ascience fiction writerand handgun instructor,

…which is something he “says” because he is a sci-fi author of some renown, and one of the state’s leading handgun instructors – including mine.

paid a visit to the MPD chief’s office to pick up some documents he’d requested. Sgt. William Palmer, the public information officer, saw that Rosenberg was packing, and asked him to dump the gun. Rosenberg refused. He insisted he had the right to wear his gun.

Palmer explained that a court order prevented him from carrying the gun. Rosenberg disagreed.

So Palmer physically took the gun away from Rosenberg and unloaded the cartridge. He handed it back when Rosenberg agreed to put the gun in his car.

And if you left it right there, it’d seem like a Catskills comedian’s joke; “A cop and a gun nut walk into the lobby of the cop shop…”

But Ms. Carlyle didn’t apparently see fit to report that Rosenberg’s “accusation” resulted in Rosenberg walking away from the event scot-free, but Palmer looking at potential legal nastiness. 

Ms. Carlyle apparently either didn’t bother to check that out, or think it was important for her smug, cossetted, know-it-all liberal audience to know it.

What’s the rest of the story? 

More tomorrow in Shot In The Dark.

Hasn’t the Twin Cities media – especially the “alternative”, liberal version – been barbering for years about how Rep. Michele Bachmann just doesn’t do “mainstream” media?

Why, yes – they have! 

But – did I hear Michele Bachmann doing an extended interview with Cathy Wurzer on MPR’s Morning Edition this morning?

Why, yes I did!

Someone tell Andy Birkey!

No, don’t.  Rather, tell Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, all of whom I’ve invited onto the Northern Alliance Radio Network in the past two years, none of whom have so much as responded.  (In the interest of completeness, note that Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak appeared, as did “Growth and Justice” majordomo Dane Smith.  We had a great time talking with both of ’em, because – shibboleths about conservative talk radio aside – Ed Morrissey and I will put our cross-aisle interviews up against anything in the commercial or public media today in terms of civility and fairness (while allowing that we are, in fact, conservative).

So whatdya say, Reps Ellison and McCollum?  How about it, Senators Franken and Klobuchar? 

For that matter, we’ve had an invite out to Common Cause Minnesota for six weeks now – submitted on this blog, via email, via a voice mail message, and on Twitter.  Not a word.

How about Denise Cardinal of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”?  Perhaps she could come on the show and discuss the Dayton-family-finance slime campaign she orchestrated?

For that matter, howzabout we get an invite to Mark Dayton?  I’ve heard Tom Emmer do a center-left show; d’ya suppose Dayton’s got the gumption to go across the aisle…

…like Representative Bachmann did?

Part of me hopes that a kid in Saint Paul tries to ride his or her bike to school…

…and duly gets told by his or her teacher, principal or school board not to bring flags to school at risk of alienating the school’s America-Hating-American population…

…so we can see something like this:

…and then see Ann Carroll, John Brodrick and Ellona Street-Stewart’s heads explode.

Figuratively.

A guy can dream.

More evidence that the Department of Justice’s dismissal of the voter intimidation case case against the New Black Panthers was purely political:

The e-mails show two political appointees’ involvement in Justice’s decision to dismiss, the watchdog group says. And, it notes, those e-mails contradict what Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for Justice’s Civil Rights Division, told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under oath: that decision involved “only career people.”

The e-mails lend additional credence to the long-held suspicion that politics drove Justice’s decision-making in this case. They also go a long way toward answering a key question: What is Attorney General Eric Holder hiding with his stonewalling against the commission’s investigation?

“These documents show that not only was the Black Panther decision shamelessly politicized by the Obama administration but also that Obama officials lied to cover up the scandal,” says Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president.

Remember – our system is juuuuuust fine.

Homeland Security, as this new video from MNMajority shows, knows who that real enemy is.

Know your place, peasants!

It is not to question your betters!

It is not to gainsay the job Barack “Bitter Gun-Clinging Jesus Freaks” has done!  It is not to question the work of Janet “It’s The Religious Right We Really Need To Worry About” Napolitano!  It is not to criticize the work of Mark Ritchie!  It is not to hold your media accountable for not holding this state’s power elite accountable!

It is to pay for a Better Minnesota and USA!

Now Do Your Job!

Does Bill Cosby Know This?

the substance used to make Jell-O, as well as many gummy candies, marshmallows, puddings and taffies – is often made from the skin, bone and tendons of animals, usually cows or pigs. The manufacturer grinds up these animal parts, treats them with a strong acid or base for a few days to help release the collagen, then boils the mixture. Then, they scrape the gelatin, which rises to the top of this boiling mixture, from the vats. One big user, Kraft, sells 300 million boxes of Jell-O in the U.S. each year and offers 158 products under the Jell-O brand name. (Jell-O is even the “Official State Snack” of Utah.)

“I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.” Bill Cosby

Last week, we addressed a piece by leftyblog Blue Man in a Red District bagging on Representative-Elect Glenn Gruenhagen (HD25A) for proposing a series of resolutions at a State School Board Association convention that he termed “extreme” that, as I pointed out, really are pretty mainstream except within the context of, well, the State School Board Association (think Comintern with a nice buffet).

It turns out Gruenhagen himself wrote a piece on the subject four years ago entitled “Can the Minority Be Wrong?”:

I would like to respond to the criticism of my 8 resolutions in last week’s editorial by Mark Rudy, titled, “Can 5 GSL school board members be wrong?” As a school board member, I have voted in the minority numerous times, although if you count my total votes, over 90% have been in agreement with the majority.

Question: Can the minority ever be right? Historically, there are thousands of examples where this is true, but I will use one recent example.

Approximately 10 years ago the Minnesota State Legislature and the governor passed the unproven educational experiment called the “Profile of Learning” (POL). The POL was promoted by great and small in public education as the solution to all public education’s shortfalls in every area of academics.

Over a billion dollars of MN taxpayer dollars were wasted promoting this unproven educational approach. There was only one problem; the POL did not have one shred of evidence that it would raise academic standards in public schools. In fact, for those who did the research, there was plenty of evidence that it would damage academic achievement.

As a public school board member I spent numerous hours studying and researching the issue both pro and con. What I found from credible sources was that the POL was hatched in atheistic psychology-land, based on feelings rather than academics. I was usually the sole vote against the POL on the GSL school board. I sent several resolutions to the Minnesota School Board Association (MSBA) conventions opposing the POL and calling for its repeal. Every resolution was voted down (some with laughter) by over 95%, but in the end the State Legislature and Governor repealed the POL. My view prevailed as a result of growing public awareness and pressure.

One thought that didn’t occur to me reading Blue Man’s original swipe at Gruenhagen; back when Paul Wellstone was the “1” in countless 99-1 votes in the Senate, the DFL – including, likely, Mr. Blue – celebrated it as an example of sticking to ones’ principles; as  a profile in courage.  Call it what  you will – Wellstone was way farther out on the extreme than Gruenhagen (at least six of whose proposals were statistically pretty mainstream, outside of the rarified confines of the State School Board Association).

As with the POL, I have spent a similar amount of time researching my 8 resolutions. I will not kneel at the “alter of public education” and blindly support experimental educational ideas with our children. Knowing the truth and the facts has a way of stiffening one’s knees.

There are many excellent staff members in public education, but we have allowed our schools to become expensive experimental laboratories (to the detriment of our children) by atheistic psychologists, radical left wing social planners and junk scientists (such as advocates for macro evolution and global warming). 

Say what  you will about evolution (it is in no way incongruent with an allegorical reading of the Bible) or the worldview of psychologists; our public schools, especially in Minnesota, are being used as social laboratories by the radical, but PR-savvy,  left (when they’re not being used as meal tickets for the Minnesota Federation of Teachers).

 I will continue to vote against such nonsense even if 100 % of state and local representatives vote for it. And I will do so, in the words of our first president, George Washington, “So help me God”.

There are several current books I would recommend for those who want to do additional research: “One Nation Under Therapy”, “Unprotected” (A campus psychiatrist reveals how political correctness in her profession endangers every student) and last, “Destructive Trends in Mental Health” (co-authored by a former president of the American Psychological Association who admits that much of modern day psychology is little more than “witch doctoring”) All three can be ordered from Barnes and Nobles.

And Christina Hoff Summers’ The War On Boys is another must-read for anyone who wants the background on the feminized teaching academy’s war on the male gender in education, under the fraudulent claim that schools were biased against girls.  Watch your lefty school administrators’ nose hairs curl as you mention it.

At any rate – it’s seemed to me for years that the DFL’s long-term agenda is to paint everyone who isn’t a DFLer as an extremist.