For as long as I’ve been reading the Strib, and certainly for longer than I’ve been writing this blog, Lori Sturdevant has been a relentlessly reliably-unquestioning voice for the DFL.

We’ll come back to that.

On Tuesday, I wrote about the Strib’s farewell hit piece against Tim Pawlenty – noting that he’d voted to pardon Jeremy Giefer.  Short story short, Giefer had knocked up his girlfriend back when he was 19 and she was 14.  He served a jail term, then married the girl and helped raise the baby and, a decade and a half after serving his time and – apparently – living clean, applied for and received a “pardon extraordinary” from a board including the Governor.

It turns out Giefer lied to the board; he’d been molesting another girl for quite some time even as he approached the board.  Inconceivably, he lied about it.

Now, Ryan Lyk at MDE notes something I’d mentioned obliquely in my piece on Monday:

The attack by the left on Pawlenty’s choice to pardon is an attack on Attorney General Lori Swanson, period. Though this seems to be one of those “hindsight is always 20/20″ moments, facts today conclude neither [the Govenor nor the Attorney General, nor the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court – the members of the panel] had the evidence they have today back then in order to make the correct decision. The DFL has decided to spin this issue until it dies; here’s hoping it does soon considering one of their own leaders was part of the consensus to pardon.

I looked back at original Strib piece.  I noticed two things.

First – nowhere in the piece is Attorney General Swanson mentioned.

Second – the piece is written by the Strib’s Pat Doyle, who seems to be taking over the “context-shaving, hit-writing” beat for the Strib.  He wrote the hit piece last summer over Emmer’s private-sector business and legal dealings, which we showed was so deprived of context as to be actively deceptive.

Is Pat Doyle becoming the Strib’s designated DFL hit man?

And is he bucking for Lori Sturdevant’s seat, one day, as the in-house DFL shill?

Reading the roll call for House Resolution 1737 – the censure of Charlie Rangel – it’s interesting to look at who voted what.

The resolution passed with a solid 333-79 margin.   The 77 “nays” were a very partisan set, of course – 77 Democrats.

Of Minnesota’s entire delegation, only Keith Ellison voted “nay”  – saying that Rangel didn’t deserve any punishment for his corruption.

Thanks, Fifth District.

It was 0430 on a Sunday.  I got paged down to Central Holding by Sergeant O’Hanrahan, from Street Crimes, about a 5150 – possible psych case – they were holding for me.  He didn’t have a lot to go by.  I got out of bed without disturbing the floozy I’d brought back from Alary’s last night, and drove down to Central.

I’d worked with O’Hanrahan years earlier, when we’d worked the crimes against literature beat together, so he recognized me.

“Hey, Sean”.

“Hey, Paddy. What’s up?”

“He’s in the isolation cell.  Follow me, and I’ll catch ya up”. 

We walked down the hall, our ears subconsciously blocking out the bedlam of an inner-city police station early on a Sunday morning.

“We got this guy – caucasian male, age 55.  Name on his DL was “Scotty Wombee”.  Arrested around 11PM for walking up to his neighbors and holding a video camera down by his groin and demanding that they…” he ruffled through the arresting officer’s notes “…touch, stroke and kiss his video camera”. 

I’d seen a lot of sick stuff in my hears as a police shrink.  Stuff that’d make a billy boat puke.  This was no great shakes.

“Wow.  About as subtle as a drag queen at a NASCAR race.  Anything else?”

“Yeah” O’Hanrahan said, “even though he was born and raised in Coon Rapids, he did his whole spiel in a German accent”. 

Hmm, I thought.  Don’t see many of those anymore.

O’Hanrahan and I walked to the control desk.  Sergeant Fitzpatrick was on the desk. 

“Hey, Seamus”, I said, nodding my head.  I’d known Fitz years ago, when we both worked the Political Vice detail.

“Hey, Lieutenant”, he nodded back.  “Here to see that Wombee character?”

“Yeah”.

“Whooie.  He’s a piece of work.  All the way back to the station, he kept asking Officers Kelly and O’McMurphy what they were compensating for with ‘za gunz and za handcuffz'”, he said, rolling his eyes.

“Open up Number Six for Lieutenant Cohen”, O’Halloran said, as I signed my roscoe over to Fitzpatrick.

———-

Wombee was about five foot nine, with thick brown hair and ferret-like eyes darting back and forth as he lounged on the chair in the isolation cell. 

“Hello”, I said.  “I’m Sean Cohen”.

Wombee looked me over as I sat.  “Inderezting dot you vould zay zat”, he said, sounding a little like a John Banner impersonator at a “Hogan’s Heroes” fan club convention.  “Vy do you hate your mozzah?”

“I don’t”, I said.  “So what do you do for a living?”

He leapt to his feat and clicked the heels of his worn Adidas together.  “I am a zhurnalizt!”

“A journalist?”

“Jawohl!”

“OK, what do you do for your other living?”

He sat back down and and affected a studied gaze.  “I am a lizenzed ah-kee-tekt”.

“Ah”‘  I riffled through the case notes.  “So the officers who picked you up said you were acting…inappropriately with your neighbors.  You even scared some of the kids”.

“I am a Zhurnalizt.  I zeek only za truze”, he said, pantomiming taking a pipe from between his teeth.

“Right, but why do what you did?”

“I AM A ZHURNALIZT!”, he bellowed, leaping to his feet.

“Right, I got that, you’re a journalist”.  Napoleon, Christ, journalists, Julius Caesar – I’d seen ’em all.  “But why?”

He sat back down, slowly, his eyes taking on that faint glow that I’d seen from so many 5150s; like they’re looking at you, but focusing on something 1000 yards the other side of you.

“I vuz making people avare of zat Legislator zat vaz in ze news”.

“Ah.  OK.  What about him?”

He looked around, and furtively whispered “he hed a gun“.

“Yeah?  And what about the gun made you walk around the neighborhood and, er, do what you did…”

He looked at me, focusing sharply, the way they do when they’re about to make a point they consider too self-evident for other people to miss.  He whispered furtivley:

“He iz kompenzating for somezing”.

“Yeah?”  What?”

He looked taken aback.

“You know – compenzating“. 

“Yep, I heard you.  Compensating for what?”

“Heh.  Everyboddy knows vot zey are compenzating for”.

“Not me.  What?”

“Hah!  For a lack of ze schlong!”

“Right.  And you know this precisely how?”

He leapt to his feet, face suddenly purple with rage.  “EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!  YOU MUST NOT QUESTION EVERYBODY!”.  He’d lost the German accent.

I sat back in my chair.  “OK.  Got it”. 

“EVERYBODY!  EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!  EVERYONE!”

“Right”. 

I turned and knocked on the two-way mirror.  O’Hanrahan walked in. 

“We’ve got a 10-569” – police code for “narcissistic personality disorder with delusions of grandeur and a tendency to reduce all personally-incongruent reality into facile stereotypes”.  Not uncommon, these days. 

I continued “I think he’ll need five milligrans of Nembutol to cool him down and get him through the night in lockup, and perhaps tomorrow we can work on something a little longer-lasting…”

O’Halloran pulled his taser and fired it at Wombee, who dropped to the ground, screaming..

“That’ll do, too”, I mumbled as I walked back to the desk, the faint odor of urine piercing the chilly, concrete-laced air. 

There are a million stories in the naked city.  Me?  I’m just walking my metaphorical beat, trying to get some underwear onto some of them.

Mr. Obama has described himself, at times, as essentially a Blue Dog Democrat

At times? What times?

I was a little leery of tackling the Tom Hackbarth story last week.   

Not because I didn’t think I had the story right; Hackbarth’s behavior was unseemly, as was that of those who piled on to add detail to the story based purely on innuendo and supposition.  

No, I was leery mostly because whenever the topic of Planned Parenthood or any sort of offense against women is concerned, there are not a few people out there who would toss rationality to the wind, if they ever had it in the first place.  

I don’t know Rachel Nygaard, and she damned sure doesn’t know me.  Can she approach this, or any, issue rationally?  Well, she writes for Minnesota Progressive Project, which isn’t a good sign.  But that’d be a smear by association, and judgment by innuendo, and that’s the sort of stuff I condemned in my original piece on the subject.  

Of which more later.  

For better or worse, Nygaard does capably summarize the core of the local Sorosphere’s meme on the subject:  

“I understand why the police and the security guard thought what they might have thought, but it really was insignificant to me.” – Representative Hackbarth  

Tracking down a woman you met once while carrying a gun is an insignificant act? Even if you remove the fact that he was carrying a gun, a man that felt the need to track a woman down when he felt she wasn’t being completely honest with him is stalking behavior  

And if you leave aside the facts that Hackbarth was accused of no crimes, that there is no evidence that the target of his misplaced interest ever knew Hackbarth was looking for her, and that  the gun is irrelevant (Hackbarth has a permit, and permit-holders are two orders of magnitude less likely to commit any kind of crime than non-permittees like, well, Rachel Nygaard, among others), she’s right.  Hackbarth, by his own admission, was at the very least exceptionally clingy; at worst…  

…well, we don’t know, because there was no “at worst”.   Hackbarth parked his car – near Planned Parenthood.  He got out and changed jackets; a security guard saw Hackbarth’s legal, holstered gun, and called the cops.  But for that chance encounter with a closed-circuit camera, we’d have likely have known nothing of the story…  

…and, Rachel Nygaard will no doubt remind you, Hackbarth could have gone on to shoot the woman in a fit of rage.   

Which is, really, all she has.  Could-haves.  

Could-haves and dogma, of course:  

The ‘boys will be boys’ dismissal of his actions by the conservative bloggers astounds me.  When is this type of behavior ever okay?    

This is the GOP blogger Mitch Berg commenting on the Hackbarth issue.

Remember – in the world of domestic law, including “abuse”, “domestic violence”, “stalking” and the like, men are considered guilty until proven innocent.  

Going on to say that

Everything Is Stalking

He later qualifies his more offending statements (not those listed above) but the misogynistic attitude seethes from his post. 

Go ahead and read the article.  It’s nonsense, of course; there is no “misogynistic attitude” – not in the sense that a rational person would understand.  The only “offense” would be to those who find any questioning of The Narrative offensive.  

I won’t say “Nygaard is lying”, because “lying” implies knowing that she’s spreading a falsehood; I think that to Nygaard’s perspective, which (I’m going to go out on a short limb and guess) comes from marinading in Big Feminist dogma for an entire adult lifetime, men are guilty of misogynism, stalking, abuse, or whatever until proven innocent – and furthermore they can never be proven innocent! 

Of course, to Big Feminism (and I think it’s fair to say Nygaard is acting as an agent of Big Feminism), defending a man against even the most facile, unsupported innuendo, by introducing fact into the discussion (or, in this case, pointing out the lack of facts behind the innuendo thrown at Hackbarth), is itself “anti-woman”.   

Clearly, Mitch Berg and Rep Hackbarth have a different moral compass than the rest of us. 

Clearly. 

I believe that the guilty should be punished – and that people are innocent until proven guilty, and that “proof” means a lot more than innuendo, narrartive, and ideology-based assumptions.  I believe in empirical, observable fact, not dogma.  I believe that people are individuals with their own motivations and backstories and strengths and weaknesses and the dignity (and degradation) that comes from the exercise of their own free will  – not facile cartoons that follow pre-written narratives.

 And it’d seem that Nygaard believes that I’m a cartoon.  She puts it in as many words:

I truly hope that they educate themselves about domestic abuse and difficulties protecting women, men and children from domestic assault. 

Dear Rachel Nygaard; keep your prejudices, your narratives, your bigotry off my body.  You don’t know me.  You have no idea where I’ve been and what I’ve done in my life (and I’m not going to tell you any of it here, anyway).  Just as your idiot friends rushed to judge Tom Hackbarth based (as I showed) entirely on narrative, screed and innuendo, so you’re doing with me.  

That’s OK – I can take care of myself just fine, and it’d seem to be all you are equipped to do anyway, and we should expect no more.  

As I said in my original post; stalking is wrong.  Clinginess is a bad idea.  Separation and divorce are a bitch, psychologically as well as every other way.  

All clear?

Barack Obama has been patting himself on the back now that General Motors has pulled off the largest public offering in history, slamming Republicans who were opposed to the bailout and manufacturing 2012 campaign fodder.

But read this, and you will be informed enough to see right through this success story.

So, let me make sure I understand. Someone invested in a company to use the entire proceeds plus $2 billion more to repay creditors and repay shareholders when the company’s need for cash is so great. The lack of logic is concerning. Perhaps a political motive to repay government funds trumped sound business judgment?

These red flags and perceptions of impropriety during the GM bankruptcy and emergence from bankruptcy are mind-boggling. If this company were not owned by the U. S. government, I am certain the SEC would begin an investigation of the company.

There is no doubt GM, at least in name, is still around because of the Obama administration’s efforts but there is also little doubt that GM would still be around today, albeit after going through a more traditional bankruptcy process.

The difference is, the taxpayer and the original shareholders wouldn’t have taken it up the tailpipe and Barack Obama wouldn’t have another campaign sound bite.

Moreover, the structure of the deal has left GM in a precarious position, forcing them to report what may be unsubstantiated profits while in contrast Ford Motor Company, having truly survived the Great Recession is accelerating under it’s own power and without taxpayer assistance.

Ford is investing in engineering, innovation and design to stay competitive, all of which require enormous amounts of capital. If GM can’t use the proceeds of their IPO to do the same they may soon find themselves slapping Cadillac badges on dressed up Chevy’s again while competitors from Japan, Germany and Korea drink their milkshake.

First, contrary to popular administration folklore, GM did not survive bankruptcy. The name did, but that is all that happened. A new company acquired the name and assets of GM, and is now the company being called GM. I wonder if the GM commercials tracing its history back to the older GM without a disclaimer is being honest with those of us who own it — the American taxpayer.

GM’s profit of $2 billion in this most recent quarter is a little puzzling as well. I can imagine that the financial systems of a large company are difficult to control. But the disclosure statement by GM about its internal controls or lack thereof concerns me.

“We have determined that our disclosure controls and procedures and our internal control over financial reporting are currently not effective. The lack of effective internal controls could materially adversely affect our financial condition and ability to carry out our business plan.”

…but other than that, it’s all good [raises thumb].

Our economy may not be heading for a double dip but GM may very well be and not despite the government’s effort…because of it.

Just you remember when any liberal calls any conservative “extremist” for any reason short of, y’know, showing actual extremist activity, that these are the people the DFL is running for office:

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is regarded as a “non-party friend” by the Communist Party USA.

So highly does the Communist Party regard Mr. Ritchie, that he has been allowed to attend an high level “not to be publicized” Party meeting in Minneapolis.

Remember the fit the left threw over Todd Palin’s flirtation with a group that advocated – academically – Alaskan secession?:

Ritchie and three of the Communists had just returned from the “Battle in Seattle” – the mass riots that broke out around the World Trade Organization meeting in that city.

Though he was an official U.S. delegate to the W.T.O. meeting, Ritchie gloats that the rioting and protests “stopped the WTO,” and that “It is a tremendous victory”.

I’m not the first to run this story.  But apparently the regional media was too busy digging through Tom Emmer’s resume to bother with Mark Ritchie’s past.

Especially his past with groups that enshrine the ideal that the ends justify the means.

(Via the Random Candice, who really needs to attend the next MOB party)

Franken and Klobuchar vote for pork:

Today’s cloture vote on an amendment from Sen. Coburn to ban earmarks from legislation in the U.S. Senate failed while both of Minnesota’s Senators voiced their lack of concern over pork-barrel spending by voting “no”. A similar measure was passed recently by the House of Representatives and the Coburn motion would have banned earmark spending from being attached to bills through 2013.

Are they- especially A-Klo – banking that the electoral climate will swing back to mindless Obamamania by 2012?   That next year’s tax hikes will leave people unperturbed, even here in Minnesota?

Or is the spell of boundless power to spend other peoples’ money that powerful?

This email, from a GOP election recount-watcher, has been making the rounds of local conservative activists.  I’m keeping the writer’s name off the record for now. 

Emphasis is added by me:

Well, it’s been a good (better) day today here at Hennepin County for the recount. Lots of notable errors in judgment…

For instance, we found one precinct with ALL Dayton ballots challenged (103 total) that appeared to be a “mass” group of blank ballots run thru without a judge’s signature – all in a row. Shows how easily certain folks of a party’s persuasion can cheat so easily – and have it counted?

Let’s repeat that for those of you who glaze over:  103 votes, run through in a group, without a judge’s signature, apparently consecutively.

Whew.  Good things the Supreme Court ruled that we don’t need to reconcile vote totals against signatures, much less investigate our whole rotten system!

It will certainly (still) be an uphill challenge, but a worthwhile one. There are so many debatable and questionable ballots – it should concern all.

Of course there are.

Which is the whole, sole, entire reason the DFL/media have started the “Frivolous Challenge” drumbeat.

The REAL question and problem being anticipated is the ‘gross’ discrepancy statewide via ‘reconciliation’ of the precincts. I’m told there are a LOT of precincts statewide that don’t reconcile their registered voter lists (count) with the number of actual ballots cast… 8,700 doesn’t appear to be a lot of difference for 87 counties with this problem.

All for today…

But there will be more.

Any time anyone tells you that a Harvard degree immunizes the bearer from complete idiocy, make them read this.

Yeah, it’s worse than this.

Remember – whenever lefties attack conservatives practices or ethics, it’s to cover up their own, er, shortcomings.

Katherine Kersten – just about the only decent columnist at the Strib these days – notes the bleeding obvious and, of course, Berg’s Seventh rearing its head:

Since Nov. 2, we’ve heard lots of grumbling from Minnesota Democrats. In a year of unprecedented GOP gains across America, they’re not satisfied that their candidates won every statewide office in our state (subject to a recount in the governor’s race).

DFLers, it seems, are sore that they didn’t win the Minnesota House and Senate as well — completing their sweep. They don’t seem to grasp that the tide that washed through the Minnesota Legislature was a nationwide phenomenon, as voters shouted “enough” to a Democrat-led glut of taxes, spending and deficits. Today, Republicans hold more legislative seats across the country than at any time since 1928.

DFLers should be counting their blessings. Instead, from their blinkered perspective, the GOP’s capture of the Minnesota Legislature appears aberrant and dreadful. And they’ve found a bogeyman to blame: Minnesota businesses. Their gripe seems twofold. First, business, through independent groups like the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses, spent too much — i.e., “bought and paid for” the Legislature. And, second, business groups unconscionably exploited voters with negative advertising.

Kersten caught it.

I caught it.

A good chunk of Minnesota’s voters caught it.

The DFL doesn’t want people to catch it (emphasis added):

We hear this so much that the reality comes as a surprise: Minnesota Democrats and their allies actually outspent Republicans and their allies in 2010 roughly 2 to 1, though final totals won’t be known for some time.

The Senate DFL caucus raised four times more than the Senate GOP caucus, and the House DFL caucus raised two times more than its GOP counterpart. The DFL state party raised over three times more than the state GOP. Mark Dayton raised more than one and a half times what Tom Emmer did.

But Dayton, the DFL and their benefactors, just don’t want you to know that:

Contrary to the DFL mantra, voters’ attention to business groups’ message was perfectly logical. On Nov. 2, the No. 1 issue was jobs — how to grow them, how to keep them here, and how to attract new, job-creating businesses to our state…Without business’ involvement, Minnesota’s electoral field would largely have been left to Democrats and their biggest donors: public employee unions such as Education Minnesota, AFSCME and SEIU, and Indian tribes with big-bucks casino interests.

Look for a huge PR and media campaign against corporate and business spending, including solemn “analysis” pieces at the Strib and MPR.

…the President assertions that:

1) The stimulus didn’t work because it wasn’t big enough

2) What we need is more spending

3) And higher taxes

Are

1) Wrong, 2) Wrong and 3) Wrong.

economic theory, history and statistical studies reveal that more taxes and spending are more likely to harm than help the economy. Those who demand spending control and oppose tax hikes hold the intellectual high ground.

Which tickles just a bit as surely President Obama has staked out the intellectual high ground, right?

Using powerful statistical methods to separate these effects in U.S. data, Andrew Mountford of the University of London and Harald Uhlig of the University of Chicago conclude that the small initial spending multiplier turns negative by the start of the second year.

Sound familiar?

government purchases have a GDP impact far smaller in New Keynesian than Old Keynesian models and quickly crowd out the private sector. They estimate the effect of the February 2009 stimulus at a puny 0.2% of GDP by now.

That’s two tenths of a percent.

By contrast, the last two major tax cuts—President Reagan’s in 1981-83 and President George W. Bush’s in 2003—boosted growth. They lowered marginal tax rates and were longer lasting…tax cuts have been far more likely to increase growth than has more spending.

Read it. It’s a bit technical, but it serves to reveal a President whose recently and soundly rejected policies are founded not in economic efficacy rather at best, in ignorance and at worst, and most likely, in an arrogant, transparent and desperate attempt to further his extreme liberal ideology.