The Twin Cities’ media and academic establishment is starting to try to unpack the disaster of their polling efforts this past election cycle.

Minnesota Public Radio has done us the service of printing both the Humphrey Institute’s Larry Jacobs’ defense of the Humphrey Institute poll and a counter from Frank Newport of Gallup Polling. And David Brauer of the MinnPost does some excellent coverage, including a revealing interview with Cullen Sheehan, who was Tom Emmer’s campaign manager, with some rare insights into what a complete crock of used food Jacobs’ explanation is.

I’ll be trying to unpack this over the course of the coming week.

The question “will Minnesota keep its eight representatives” is still very, very much up in the air. The when the population count comes out today, it is – by all accounts – touch and go whether we’ll keep all eight seats and ten electoral votes:

Depending on which of several estimates is right, the state either will lose one U.S. House seat or barely hang on to the eight it has had since 1960, when historic population shifts to the South and West reduced the number from nine.

“It’s really, really close,” said state demographer Tom Gillaspy, who projects that Minnesota could fall about 1,000 residents short of keeping its eight House seats. “It looks like we’re just below the line right now.”

It’s by no means a done deal:

Other estimates show Minnesota keeping all eight seats in Congress, with about 15,000 people to spare. But the experts warn that they are just that: estimates. “When they do the count, things could change,” said Clark Bensen of Polidata, a national data analysis firm that puts Minnesota right on the cusp of losing a seat.

And if we don’t lose it this year, we’ll lose it in 2020, unless they discover gold in Gull Lake or, better yet, oil in Owatonna.

And that matters, because…:

That kind of shrinkage could set state legislators off on a scramble next year to carve seven congressional districts out of eight, a highly partisan process that has wound up in court the last four decades.

Each of America’s 435 congressional districts will have a population of just over 700,000 people.

With that in mind, it is time for Minnesota to confront reality; if we lose a seat, it is high time we consolidated Minneapolis and Saint Paul into a single district, and get rid of either Betty McCollum or Keith Ellison’s seat.  The Twin Cities – with maybe Richfield or the Brooklyns thrown in – have just about the right population to stand alone as a congressional district.  It is high time we calved off the west-suburban parts of the Fifth into the Third; way overdue that we give Shoreview and Woodbury to the Sixth and Second, respectively.

There is no reason for each city, in effect, to hold an entire district hostage with its own whims and needs if we lose a district.   Minneapolis and Saint Paul together account for around an eighth of Minnesota’s citizens; it is completely wrong that they dominate a quarter of our House representation.

Furthermore, getting rid of the Second, Third or Sixth would leave the DFL in control of four out of seven House seats – which is clearly unrepresentative of Minnesota’s current voting patterns, with strong GOP majorities in the Legislature and a DFL governor whose “mandate” was so weak he is effectively dead on arrival – quite likely the weakest governor in recent Minnesota history as of inauguration day.

Discussion Topics:

1. If we lose a seat, which district should we tube, and why?
2. Who deserves to be tossed more; Ellison, or McCollum?
3. Do we need to start soliciting more illegal immigrants for the 2020 census?

Tammy Nerby is playing the MinneHaHa Comedy Club on New Years Eve.

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 and I follow from 1-3PM Central.  We’ve got like three weeks to review, here,  Plus Tammy Nerby joins us.
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

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

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

Join us!

With the new session coming up, all you liberals are going to be in for a new experience – being a legislative minority here in Minnesota.

It’s never happened, not in the political lifetime of any of you out there.

It’s gonna be a whole new feeling for all you libs – not being able to spin the wheels and levers of government to make it do what you want at will or, at the very worst, to be able to control a chamber of the legislature to bog down legislature.  All you have is the veto (and of course DFL control of the state’s bureaucracies, which is not an inconsiderable power by itself).   He’ll float his “Crack Whore With A Stolen Platinum Card Budget”, just like the people who paid for his election told him to.  It’ll get shot down.  He’ll turn around and veto the budget put forward by the responsible adults.  That’s how it’s done.

So, speaking as someone who’s been in the legislative minority in this state as long as I’ve been in this state – 25 years, now – here’s some advice for all you DFLers.

You can thank me later.

The entire legislature was elected, not “Selected“:  Yes, the people really did flush the DFL out of office.  Buck up, little campers; 2012 is another election.  Although I think we’re gonna clobber you then, too.

Stay Calm:  Some of you people are nuts even when you’re in power.  We conservatives are pretty good at tamping down our odd nutbar.  You guys need some practice.  You’ll probably get it.

Elections Have Consequences: The DFL used its temporary legislative supremacy to try to jam down a phalanx of spending and taxes over the past four years.  They were stymied by Governor Pawlenty, who exercised his veto and conducted a masterful rear-guard job.  And when he did, you – especially your pundit friends in the media – were downright heart-rending in your demands that Pawlenty also represent the Minnesotans who didn’t vote for him, and pass the DFL’s legislation.  Now, as a conservative, I’m under no illusion that Dayton is going to vote my conscience when he takes office. 

So I’m counting the hours until we get the first mawkish blog post or Lori Sturdevant column asking Republicans to remember that “you represent the majority of Minnesotans that didn’t vote for you”.  In that way that the DFL always forget when they controlled all the knobs and levers.

Pack Your Bags!:  I thought nothing could match Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon’s narcissistic solipsism in threatening to move to France if George W. Bush won his various elections (and naturally, neither did), until I heard Minnesota DFLers threatening to leave the state if Emmer had won the election.  Well, controlling both houses of the legislature is arguably a better deal than having the governor’s office and one chamber.

So since I just bought a truck, do you and your crap need a ride to Hudson?

Get A Grip: No matter what the DFL, Tom Dooher, the Strib’s editorial board and DFL-pet columnists tell you, Minnesota isn’t really going to change all that much when the adults take over.  Oh, keeping government fed will no longer be the primary stated mission of government (and if the GOP majority doesn’t change that, those of us who sent them there will be happy to bring them home), but the schools will stay open, the parks will still be there for, er, parking, there will still be libraries, cops and firemen will still respond (unless you live in a city where the DFL will hold those services hostage).  Indeed, the schools will probably do better, you’ll be able to enjoy the park to relax from the job you don’t have now but are more likely to have then, you can spend your time at the library reading rather than job-hunting, and so on.  But by and large, not all that much is going to change.

Except, it seems, your (plural) blood pressure.

Buck up, little vegan campers.  We conservatives survived.  So will you – if you choose to.

“Why don’t Muslims crack down on their terrorist elements” has been a pretty standard question since 9/11.

The short answer – they, largely, are:

It used to be that there were plenty of mosques in the West run by radicalized, or very conservative, clerics. But no more. Since September 11, 2001, Western nations have cracked down. Radical clerics were either expelled from the country (these guys tend to be migrants), or police investigations of criminal activity by these firebrand clerics put them in jail, or on the run.

Which is not to say there was never a problem:

 Turns out that in the 1980s and 90s, a lot of mosques had been taken over by a small number of radical members. Threats and violence were used, and it often got quite ugly. This was ignored until the 1990s, and not tolerated much at all after 2001. While this kept the radical Moslems quiet, it did not always change their attitudes. But these men were usually migrants, often from the same country, or region, as their fellow congregants.

As with so many things, 9/11 changed all that:

After 2001, Moslems in the West, particularly the United States, knew that they were responsible for the terrorist activity of Moslems they worshiped together with. They could usually recognize another migrant who might be up to something dangerous. Action could be taken to stop it, or drive the troublemaker away (or turn him in to the cops). But the new converts were harder to read. Thus the growing tendency to scrutinize those seeking instruction to become a convert.

And it’s having an effect:

Even before September 11, 2001, al Qaeda warned its agents to not hang out with American Moslems, who were known to turn in suspected radicals. Now American Moslems are letting the FBI know about suspicious new guys seeking to convert. That has led to the arrest of some active terrorists. But in many European countries, local Moslems are less prone to let the police know of someone suspicious, and there are more active Islamic radicals (because the Middle East is closer, and Moslem migrants are less likely to be accepted by the natives.)

Unmentioned in the piece; is the Twin Cities’ extremely fundamentalist Somali Muslim community an exception?

The financial crisis is over!  Our bank system is sound!

Seriously!

The FDIC has nothing better to do than harass banks that display Christian seasonal imagery!

Federal Reserve examiners come every four years to make sure banks are complying with a long list of regulations. The examiners came to Perkins last week. And the team from Kansas City deemed a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the teller’s counter and buttons that say “Merry Christmas, God With Us.” were inappropriate. The Bible verse of the day on the bank’s Internet site also had to be taken down.

“I don’t think there should be a problem with them displaying whatever religious symbols they want to display,” said Amy Weierman, a Perkins resident.

Specifically, the feds believed, the symbols violated the discouragement clause of Regulation B of the bank regulations. According to the clause, “…the use of words, symbols, models and other forms of communication … express, imply or suggest a discriminatory preference or policy of exclusion.”

Of course, now that the Feds and, soon, the UN will be regulating what goes on the Internet, I’m sure I’ll have to start wishing people a happy freaking “Festivus” before too long.

The FCC – led by Julius “Caesar” Genachowski – is voting on its first “Net Neutrality” rules:

Contentious Internet traffic rules facing a vote next week are likely to be adopted without radically veering from a proposal unveiled earlier in the month, telecommunications policy analysts said on Wednesday.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote on Dec. 21 on whether to adopt regulations that ban the blocking of lawful traffic but allow Internet service providers to ration Web traffic on their networks.

So now the Internet – developed from a scientists’ and academics’ toy by immense private-sector investment – is now under government control.

And if the FCC is now telling service providers what they can’t block, then it’s a short step to them saying what they must block.

It’s the camel’s nose in the tent.

Joan Growe.  May Schunk.  Carol Molnau.

I mention them just to prove to myself that I can name the last couple of Lieutenant Governors.

I’ve heard not a few DFLers “joke” that even now, they can’t name the LG-elect (Yvonne Prettner Solon, with no hyphen) even now, weeks before the coronation.  Of course, unlike Carol Molnau (who led the state’s Department of Transportation until she got scapegoated for the 35W Bridge collapse) and Schunk (who served to try to whip the Teachers Union into line behind Ventura) Prettner Solon has already served her entire purpose for being on the ticket – delivering votes from the Iron Range to Lord Fauntleroy.

No, really – she all but says it herself:

Rested and ready after a two-week vacation in Mexico, Minnesota Lt. Gov.-elect Yvonne Prettner Solon said Thursday she’s already preparing for two key roles in the Mark Dayton administration.

On Thursday — the day the DFL team was officially certified winners of the Nov. 2 election — Prettner Solon said her first priority will be to coordinate startup of the new Senior Services Center that she will oversee at the Capitol.

The new office, which will coordinate senior services from several state agencies, will be the first of its kind in Minnesota and makes good on an early campaign promise by Dayton and Prettner Solon.

Which is a step up from “Junior Fire Marshal”, I guess…

Prettner Solon said her second-biggest job will be to serve as a liaison between Dayton and lawmakers. A veteran legislator, Prettner Solon knows many of the key players, especially in the Senate, where she served as chairwoman of committees that oversaw health care and energy issues.

Um, she knew many of the key players.

Prettner Solon said she hopes not to fade into obscurity as many lieutenant governors have done, and that Dayton has made it clear their offices will work jointly.

“The plan is to make it the office of the governor and lieutenant governor, really a single office,” she said.

The better for fetching sweaters, Triscuits and Kombucha.

A tax hike is averted, but only for two years – not enough time or certainty to “create” jobs but certainly better than a tax increase.

Majorities of both parties supported the bill. Voting in favor were 139 Democrats and 138 Republicans, while 112 Democrats and 36 Republicans voted against it. Eight lawmakers didn’t vote.

The tax-cut plan extends through 2012 all Bush-era tax reductions on income, capital gains and dividends. It continues expanded unemployment insurance benefits through 2011, cuts payroll taxes by 2 percentage points during 2011 and lets businesses write off 100 percent of capital investments between Sept. 9, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2011.

Classic Pelosi:

“I’m sorry for the price that has to be paid by our children and our grandchildren to the Chinese government to pay for the increase in the deficit that the Republicans insisted upon.”

We’ve recently covered this ground before but Nancy is fooling almost no one. The government creates a deficit by spending money it doesn’t have and in this case money it was never going to have and in either case is not entitled to. Voters made that clear to everyone but Nancy Pelosi.

Some early reactions:

The tax-cut deal, along with larger-than-projected gains in U.S. retail sales, prompted economists to raise their forecasts for gross domestic product and consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy.

Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, increased his 2011 growth forecast half a percentage point to 3.1 percent. Tom Porcelli, a senior economist at RBC Capital Markets Corp. in New York, raised his by one percentage point, also to 3.1 percent.

Deutsche Bank Securities economists, led by Joseph LaVorgna, said the tax agreement would increase inflation- adjusted growth by 0.7 percentage point, to a 4 percent annual rate for the fourth quarter of next year.

Only after the fact will we find out what earmarks were hidden in the 1900 pages but for now the passage of this bill brings short-term stability for taxpayers, many of which have been planning all year for higher taxes next year.

In light of this, it will be interesting to see if there will be a last minute boost to holiday shopping – I predict that very thing.

…for attorneys and consultants that is.

As for the rest of you, not so much.

Barack Obama just finished a summit with twenty US CEO’s urging them to get off the sidelines, spend their hoards of cash and start hiring.

President Barack Obama pressed 20 corporate chief executives Wednesday to suggest policies that would spur them to “start investing in job creating enterprises.”

Hey Barry, I got an idea for you if they didn’t come up with it: ask congress to repeal what is left of your shitty health care reform bill.

Big employers faced with incorporating the first round of health-care changes next month are grappling with how to comply with the long list of new rules.

Many companies are hiring consultants to help sort though the mountain of new mandates, which include extending dependent coverage to children up to age 26, and may eventually result in covering more employees. Some are also considering changes to their plans—including pushing costs to workers.

Might they have instead invested these resources in job creating enterprises or hiring new employees?

Maybe, just maybe had you focused on jobs instead of ramming socialized health care down America’s throat you wouldn’t be in such a pickle. How’s that national unemployment rate going for you Barry? Are you excited about your chances in 2012?

Today the national unemployment rate hovers near where it began the year, just shy of 10 percent.

It’s funny how liberals do everything they can to short circuit capitalism and then ask the capitalists to clean up their mess.

And in the end, those they claim to serve end up paying the price via lost jobs, wages, or both.

The Minnesota Lame-ber of Commerce is joining the minority and declaring it’s time for a new Vikings football stadium.

Vikings stadium supporters, despite the state’s looming $6.2 billion budget and widespread public opposition, will push hard for a public subsidy package during the 2011 legislation session beginning Jan. 4. [emphasis mine-JR]

Two thoughts:

1) How stupid does that sentence sound given our current economic conditions

2) Let’s wait until after Sunday’s Chicago game to see how much support there is for an outdoor stadium.

…or the Vikings for that matter.

PS:  GOP –  remember why we sent you

I had a chance to sit down with Sol Gallivan.  By day, he’s a data entry clerk at a regional gas station chain.  In his free time, though, he is Woodbury’s self-anointed “Guardian of Empiricism”. 

I sat down with him in his apartment along Valley Creek Lane.  He was dressed in his royal-blue leotard, a red and yellow “GoE” shield embroidered to the front, a red cape slung jauntily over his shoulder.  He poured a Chocolate YooHoo onto a bowl of Captain Crunch as we spoke.

MITCH: So you call yourself the East Metro’s “Guardian of Empiricism”.  What does that mean?

GALLIVAN: I find places where people are behaving irrationally, and I go and mock them.

MITCH: Er, OK – give me an example of this…

GALLIVAN:  I went to Best Buy on Black Friday.

MITCH: And…?

GALLIVAN:  I stood by the cash register and yelled at people who were buying extended warranty protection. 

MITCH:  Er…you yelled at them?

GALLIVAN:  I yelled HEY! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT MOST PRODUCTS DON’T GO BAD DURING THE WARRANTY PERIOD?  YOU ARE BEING IRRATIONAL!

MITCH:  Er – well, be that as it may, it’s their choice…

GALLIVAN:  Right.  And it’s my choice to mock them for it!  Because they’re gullible!

MITCH:  Well, sure – everyone who’s ever worked in the industry knows those warranties are prett much a cash cow for the business.  Still, it’s their choice!  What difference does it make to you?

GALLIVAN:  They have done something mockable!  It is my duty and mission to mock it!

MITCH: Duty and mission to whom?

GALLIVAN:  Empiricism!

MITCH: Sounds like your mission is to be a self-proclaimed, solipsistic pain in the ass!

GALLIVAN:  That’s what the security guard said as they threw me out on the street.  Irrational sheeple!

MITCH:  OK.  So you yell at people in checkout lines…

GALLIVAN:  Oh, don’t you underestimate me!  That’s just a time-killer!  The other day, I went to a H’Mong wedding. You know the bride was like fifteen, right?

MITCH:  Right.  It’s their cultural custom.

GALLIVAN:  Right.  And so I  jumped up by the witch doctor or the Oobadooba or whatever you call him, and yelled “HEY!  GETTING MARRIED AT THIS AGE IS IRRATIONAL! 

MITCH:  Wait – you interrupted someone’s wedding to insult their cultural norm…

GALLIVAN:  Not just a “cultural norm” – an “irrational” cultural norm that is just stupid!

MITCH:  Um…OK. 

GALLIVAN:  I walked into a Green Bay Packer bar and turned off the big screen TV, and yelled at them that they were empirically wasting their time watching football!  They should be reading a good book!  On biology!

MITCH: I bet that went well!

GALLIVAN:  They were too drunk to catch me before I got out the kitchen door.

MITCH: I bet.   Coulda been your funeral…

GALLIVAN: Oh, speaking of which!  Yes!  Funerals are the best!  I love going to funerals and jumping up during the happy-talk, and yelling HEY, YOU GULLIBLE PEOPLE!  IT’S ALL JUST GOING TO DECOMPOSE!

MITCH:  To a room full of the bereaved?

GALLIVAN:  They’ll thank me later. 

MITCH: Right.

GALLIVAN:  And don’t get me started on churches.

MITCH: Hm.

GALLIVAN:  But since you did – hooie!  Stupid, gullible people!

MITCH: Why?

GALLIVAN:  Because there is no empirical basis for religion!

MITCH:  When has anyone ever said there was? 

GALLIVAN:   Exactly!

MITCH:  No, not exactly.   Faith isn’t about empirical belief.  It’s about answering the questions that science doesn’t, and most likely can not.

GALLIVAN:  G’huck.  Right.  How stupid!  Science explains everything.

MITCH:  How did life start?

GALLIVAN:  A bunch of chemicals randomly formed and were hit by lightning.

MITCH:  And you empirically know this how?  There’s been no empirical, testable means to show not only how life began, but how human life evolved in the time we’ve had to develop things like “consciousness” and such.  None!

GALLIVAN:  We…well, we will know it someday.

MITCH:  How?

GALLIVAN:  Well, I believe we…

MITCH:  What’s that?

GALLIVAN:  I…er…

[faint smell of urine]

MITCH:  Anyway.  What’s your next project?

GALLIVAN:  On “Christmas” morning, I’m going to go around and tell kids there is no Santa Claus.

MITCH:  Sounds like you’re less a “Guardian of Empiricism” and more of a self-centered narcissist who gets a kick out of trying to poke holes in whatever happiness other people choose, for reasons of their own, to have in their lives.  I mean, it’s their business, not yours, right?

GALLIVAN: No.  Anywhere someone does something gullible, in whatever part of their life, for whatever reason, it’s my business. 

MITCH: That’s just…I’m sorry.  Words fail me.  Oh wait – one more question.  Do you mock people who believe that human life begins at birth?    So that people who get abortions in, say, the second trimester are killing a human being, because empirically, infants delivered in the middle of the second trimester are, empirically, alive today?

GALLIVAN:  What are you, a neanderthal?  That’s a womyn’s choice and personal business!

MITCH: Unlike culture, faith or choice of football team?

GALLIVAN:  You are stupid.  It’s because you are very gullible.  Pardon me, I need to go and change…

MITCH:  By all means.  I think we’re done…

GALLIVAN:  Live long and prosper!

I know this is a bit off the radar for SITD but I don’t know of many television commercials more absurd; more ridiculous; more annoying than those yogurt commercials where Jamie Lee Curtis pounces on chipper but apparently constipated passers by all too willing to sample yogurt that’s way too yummy to be formulated to assist you in “cleaning our your accounts payable.”

(…and yes, that’s an arrow pointing to a woman’s crotch)

As if the spots weren’t aggravating enough, it turns out they were bogus. Who can imagine a world where a delicious magical milky pudding that helps you “drop off the kids” and keeps you safe from the common cold…is just a fairy tale?

The U.S. unit of French food giant Danone S.A. agreed to settle state and federal investigations into alleged false advertising about the health benefits of its Activia yogurt and DanActive dairy drinks for $21 million, federal officials announced Wednesday.

The Federal Trade Commission said Dannon, a unit of French food and bottled waters company Danone, will drop claims that its Activia yogurt and dairy products will help prevent colds or alleviate digestive problems. The company wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Well we know it’s not because they were in the bathroom.

Good to know the FTC has the time and resources to care…let alone investigate the claims that Activia helps you “lay down the law.”

I would expect no less than ten additional references to “boweling for dollars” in the comments section. Thank you in advance.

And now, something totally different:

The news sounded so, so good to start out.  After enduring six years of knife-to-the-throat tax increases under Chris Coleman, it almost looked as if Saint Paul was going to finally wake up, smell the anti-spending coffee, and get real…

…but only if you don’t read too closely.

No, it does start promisingly:

The St. Paul City Council on Wednesday passed a 2011 budget without an increase in the property tax levy for the first time since Mayor Chris Coleman took office five years ago.

The adopted budget, after accounting adjustments, is about $473 million, an increase of about $4.2 million from 2010.

Coleman hailed the passage, calling it a victory for property taxpayers in St. Paul.

OK.  So far so good.  As long as there are no hidden whammies.

But when DFLers talk about being fiscally responsible, there is always  a hidden whammy.  Emphasis added:

Still, he and officials in local governments across the state are bracing for what will happen at the Legislature as lawmakers look for solutions to solve a $6.2 billion hole in the state budget.

“As we head into the new year, we are eager to work with Gov. Dayton and the Legislature on a budget solution for the state that allows local governments the resources necessary to do what we’ve done in St. Paul — to craft a budget that invests in public safety and other critical services without increasing the burden on property tax payers,” Coleman said in a statement.

Coleman built his budget assuming the city would receive $62.5 million in local government aid from the state. The city has had its allocations cut in recent years, though.

 Whammy.

Coleman and the Gang of Seven are holding the City of Saint Paul hostage, to coerce the new legislature to give them their way.

Joe Doakes – a fellow Saint Paul hostage – writes:

So the Council intentionally adopted a budget based on getting a subsidy from the State, a subsidy that we all know doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of happening in a Republican-dominated legislature. The only possible rationale for that is to gain political negotiating advantage. If the Republicans don’t raise state taxes to fund St. Paul’s budget, we’ll have to lay off cops and firefighters. And it’ll all be the Republican’s fault! Because they hate Minorities! And children! And kittens! If Republicans don’t pony up, we’ll make St. Paul residents suffer! And it’ll be their fault!

 In other words, the St. Paul City Council just took its own citizens hostage.

 Yep.  Because it’s for sure it won’t be the Mayor’s two dozen staff offices that get cut.  It won’t be the massively-redundant Park and Rec effort, or Kathy Lantry’s Landlord Harassment program.  It’ll be the cops and firemen that get laid off first.  

Seems St. Paul hasn’t changed so much since Dillinger hid out here in the 1930’s, the crooks just moved to nicer offices.

At least when Dillinger roamed the streets, the law-abiding citizens knew who the crooks were, and didn’t keep returning them to office.

If you happen to be part of my tiny audience in New Jersey, I’d like to ask that you give Governor Christie a call.  He’s got a miscarriage of justice to fix.

Brian Aitkin was in the process of moving from Colorado to New Jersey.  He was moving a couple of handguns which he’d bought in Colorado.  He was doing everything by the book:

According to testimony [his roommate] later gave at Aitken’s trial, before leaving Colorado Aitken researched and printed out New Jersey and federal gun laws to be sure he moved his firearms legally. Richard Gilbert, Aitken’s trial attorney, says Aitken also called the New Jersey State Police to get advice on how to legally transport his guns, although Burlington County Superior Court Judge James Morley didn’t allow testimony about that phone call at Aitken’s trial.

His mother, a social worker, called the police – erroneously – while worried over his son’s mental state during his divorce, which was at the time going badly (his vile pig ex-wife was withholding visitation with his kid).  The cops turned that into an excuse to search his car, which turned out the legally-stored handguns after a two-hour search.  They arrested him – regardless that he’d stored the guns precisely in accordance with New Jersey’s draconian, fascist gun laws, and that Federal law grants lawful gun owners an exception to state gun laws if they are moving from one location to another.

Unfortunately, Aitkin had a judge even more bigoted against gun owners than the ones in Hennepin County.

The jury never heard about the moving exception, virtually guaranteeing Brian’s conviction.

Yet Judge Morley wouldn’t allow Aitken to claim the exemption for transporting guns between residences. He wouldn’t even let the jury know about it. During deliberations, the jurors asked three times about exceptions to the law, which suggests they weren’t comfortable convicting Aitken. Morley refused to answer them all three times. Gilbert and Nappen, Aitken’s lawyers, say he also should have been protected by a federal law that forbids states from prosecuting gun owners who are transporting guns between residences. Morley would not let Aitken cite that provision either.

Brian Aitken is currently serving seven years in a state prison. Now a website and Facebook page are asking Governor Chris Christie to pardon Aitken.

Gov. Christie has proven a sensible leader and shown political courage in taking on his state’s debt-ridden “Situation.” Here’s hoping that Christie, a former prosecutor, will see that Aitken’s continued imprisonment does nothing to serve the interests of justice.

So all you folks stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps; give the Gov a call.  This has to be fixed.

The Governor elect appeared on Bloomberg yesterday and continues to hedge his campaign promises as he realizes how far out of sync they are with the wishes of Minnesotans as expressed so clearly in nearly every Minnesota election contest…save his.

Republican leaders have so far indicated they will be taking a hard line against raising taxes — a key facet of Dayton’s budget plans during the campaign. During the Bloomberg interview, however, Dayton warned that a budget solution without tax increases would have serious consequences.

[insert serious sounding music here]

Indeed. To a liberal, serious consequences mean the devastating possibility that government may have to do more with less…sort of like most of the rest of us.

“I campaigned on a pledge that I would reduce the regressivity of Minnesota’s state and local taxes and ask upper income Minnesotans to pay closer to their appropriate share — the same amount as everybody else,” Dayton said.

This always makes me laugh…or cry depending on the day.

First off, what kind of delusional pinhead labels a tax rate that increases with income regressive? It’s by definition progressive. That’s what the word means you twit.

Then again, who can blame a guy who is so far removed from reality; whose butler’s butler pays his bills from the coffers his great grandpappy filled years ago.

Second, half of us don’t pay taxes at all – many get a “tax credit” even when they pay nothing (save social security) into the system. I know a lot of people that employ others that pay in one quarterly installment what many people pay in taxes all year long. The fact is, upper income Minnesotans pay way more than their share by any measure of the use of services, infrastructure or resources you can muster.

Add in all the additional sales taxes (albeit somewhat by choice), self employment taxes,  and alternative minimum taxes, just to name a few that the upper middle class – let alone the wealthy – pay and it is clear that the Pareto principal is alive and well as it regards a minority representing a majority of revenue collected in the form of taxes.

The fact is, thousands are getting a free ride – and none of them are “upper income.” You want to talk fairness? For real? Then everybody that makes anything should pay something – anything into the system.

“Republicans don’t think [raising taxes is] such a great idea, but they’re going to find it’s very difficult to cut $6.2 billion — which is about 19 percent of our budget — without drastically affecting especially education, which is almost half of the state expenditure.”

Either way, he said, “it’s going to be very painful, there’s no way around it.”

Indeed, and if Republicans don’t deliver that pain they won’t be delivering on the promises that got them elected either.

Well, yeah – Christmas, too.  Of course.

No, I’m actually referring to the seventh annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Winter Party!

Coming just in time to cure those mid-winter, post-Christmas blahs!

Free up your calendar for…well, just free it up!

(OK – I’m thinking February).

Details sometime around Christmas.  (The Russian Orthodox one, I mean).

Minneapolis – aka “The Greece of the Midwest”, “A Cold California”, or “A Less Toxic New Jersey” – is stuck in a vortext of public pensions, higher taxes, and shrinking tax base.

Katie Kieffer attended the city’s annual tax meeting (held with about two days’ notice to the city’s, er, taxpayers) and found that the natives were restless.

The city suffers from zooming public pensions and a shrinking tax base.  Their solution – in true Greek, California, or Flint Michigan style -is to jack up taxes on those that are remaining and have property to tax.

And it’s just not working!

Minneapolis is now considered the second-most dangerous city in the U.S. when it comes to falling property values. Meanwhile, the city’s unemployment rate has increased to 6.7 percent from the month of May’s level of 6.1 percent. I think a Minneapolis home-owner named Sean offered the best solution: “It’s time to cut the budget.”

Read the whole thing.

I’ve had a few people ask: the memorial service for Tom Conlon will be 2pm this coming Monday, December 20th, at Saint Louis King of France Catholic Church in Saint Paul.

The Saint Paul Republicans are throwing an Irish Wake on Sunday from 4-8pm at – where else?  – O’Gara’s Bar & Grill, at Selby & Snelling in Saint Paul.  The event promises “Irish music, laughter, reminiscing and sobbing provided”

Speed Gibson on the deflation of the Vikings and, incidentally, The Dome:

[L]et’s hire some of Al Franken’s recount lawyers to charge the Vikings with breaking the [Collapsodome’s] lease for not living up to expectations.

When the Legislature reconvenes, I picture someone like Jason Lewis leading a procession to Mall of America Field as it’s now called, proclaiming: “Mr. Dayton, tear down this Dome!”

I could think of another host who could be persuaded.

He’s also show up at Winter Park to help ’em pack the morning after Zygi Wilf threatens to move the team to Los Angeles if they don’t ge ta stadium.

…unless it’s your car, you leave the keys in it and you’re from Tennessee. Then you and the criminal are in cahoots whether you like it or not.

A suit was brought against a man who left his keys in his car, which was promptly stolen and then collided with another vehicle causing injuries to three passengers. Initially, the lawsuit was filed against the city of Murfreesboro and its police department– however, that suit was dismissed by the Tennessee Court of Appeals. But the court is allowing the suit against the owners of the vehicle to continue.

It’s a dumb idea to leave your keys in your car. It’s a dumb idea to leave a loaded gun out in the open. If a criminal uses either to commit a crime, are you liable? Some would say in the latter, yes; but in the former?

So if I leave a pile of bricks in my front yard for a landscape project and someone comes by and uses one to smash someone’s head in am I liable for that too? Where does the law draw the line?

Discuss.

An overnight destroys The Nook, a Saint Paul institution:

Mike Runyon, co-owner of the Nook, said the fire caused “total devastation” to his business.

The Nook, in happier days

“The whole place is burned down. You can’t do anything with it,” he said as a fire investigator worked through the remnants of the torched interior.

Runyon said it appears a refrigerator-freezer unit in the bar’s kitchen had an electrical malfunction that sparked the fire about 4 a.m.

Proof that God not only exists, but loves us.

The bar, near Cretin-Derham Hall Catholic school at Hamline and Randolph avenues, is noted for offerings like the Juicy Nookie and the Paul Molitor — both burgers stuffed with molten cheese.

Runyon and co-owner Ted Casper, both 30, have owned the space for 10 years and recently took over the Ran-Ham Bowling Center space next door.

The fire did not damage the bowling lanes, Runyon said, but they will be closed for a day or two while the owners figure out their next steps.

“We have 25 staff members. They’re all like family,” Runyon said. “So it’s a big blow. It’s right around Christmastime — that’s a big time for people to make their money.”

What is the Federal government going to do about this?

Why does Barack Obama hate burger-eating people?

I am a firm believer in the sanctity of marriage.

So it’s a tragedy, truly, that Scarlett Johannson and, er, whatshisface are calling it quits:

“After long and careful consideration on both our parts, we’ve decided to end our marriage,” they say in a joint statement. “We entered our relationship with love and it’s with love and kindness we leave it. While privacy isn’t expected, it’s certainly appreciated.”

Johannson and that other guy. One might worry about the sanctity of marriage in Hollywood.

According to a source, the couple quietly split six months ago, and Johansson initiated the move. The actress began apartment-hunting in New York City and is currently in Jamaica with some girlfriends, the source adds.

Like I said.  No comment.

UPDATE:  Welcome, readers of PZ Myers’ Twitter feed.  The line you’re looking for is down in the comments. 

And, using the same logic Gavin Sullivan used in stating I “confirm” that your hero’s marriage was “ordained by God”, it’s fairly certain that Gavin Sullivan supports indiscriminate torture, since he pretty well waterboarded context.

…at least for a week…or two.

U’s stadium being prepared for Monday’s Vikings-Bears game; Metrodome won’t be ready

…nor will the Vikings.