The voters of Wisconsin have spoken.

Even after two months of gnashing and thrashing and sniveling, The People of Wisconsin have reaffirmed last November’s results.

After the media and left (pardon my redundancy) all but declared it a Kloppenberg victory and referendum on Walker.

And it just goes to show the media – just because liberals swarm in Madison doesn’t mean an entire state has drunk the koolaid.

You’ve heard the news: corrected tallies put Prosser on top after a 7,500-vote swing.

Naturally, the Democrats are upset.  It’s almost folklore; only Democrats benefit from mysterious and opaque swings in votes!

Kloppenburg supporters reacted with alarm, pointing out that Nickolaus had worked in the Assembly Republican caucus during the time that Prosser, a former Republican lawmaker, served as the Assembly speaker and that Nickolaus also had faced questions about her handling of elections as clerk.

In the liberal world, a public servant’s work in public service is “experience” for Democrats, and “evidence” against Republicans.

And show me a public servant that hasn’t “faced questions”.

“Wisconsin voters as well as the Kloppenburg (campaign) deserve a full explanation of how and why these 14,000 votes from an entire city were missed. To that end, we will be filing open records requests for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the county,” Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said in a statement.

Yeah, Ms. Mulliken!

And while you’re at it, let’s get answers about all the irregularities in Hennepin County!

Oh, wait…

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) raised the possibility of an independent investigation over the recovery of the votes.

“This is a serious breach of election procedure,” he said. “We’re going to look further. She waited 24 hours to work this. And she waited until after she verified the results, making it that much more difficult to challenge and verify the results.”

‘We went over everything’

I suppose Wisconsin Voters should be happy Barca didn’t make his announcement from a hotel in Chicago.

Of course, not every Wisconsin Dem is chanting the party line.  I’m adding some emphasis:

But at the news conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, said: “We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up, and we’re satisfied they’re correct.”

As a Democrat, she said, “I’m not going to stand here and tell you something that’s not true.”

Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, who sat in on Nickolaus’ news conference, said voters can be confident in the results because “all the votes are in that office. If anyone wants to look at them and verify, they can.”

This is a great day for America.

Since there is talk that the federal government will shut down this weekend, it’s Shot In The Dark’s job, as the Twin Cities’ best source of news, to tell you what to expect.

With Austan Goolsbee and the Council of Economic Advisors busy looking for work at McDonalds, President Obama will go on a deficit spending spree four times as huge and damaging as that of his predecessor.

With the Department of the Treasury shut down, US currency will cease to have any value.  All sales and purchases in the United States, from the transfer of Mortgage Backed Derivatives to buying Tic Tacs at the gas station, will be transacted by old-fashioned barter of goods or services.  Cigarettes will become the primary unit of currency…

…except that without the Department of Health and Human Services to mandate the warning labels, there will be no cigarettes.

With the Department of Education furloughed, all schools (public and private) in the US will be sold at sheriff sales and turned into union-staffed Community Centers.

With the Department of Housing and Urban Development wandering the streets from bar to bar, public housing in the United States may become blighted and undesirable.

With the Attorney General looking for work as a community organizer with ACORN,  brigades of government lawyers will be forced to seek honest work.  As prostitutes.

With the Department of the Interior not functioning, national parks will become covered with grass and animals.

Vice President Joe Biden will actually have to seek work in a coal mine.

If you’re a veteran?  Without Veteran’s affairs, you won’t be anymore!  All that service to the country…gone!

With Commerce closed for business, no business can take place.  But that won’t matter, because with the Department of Labor closed, nobody will do any work at all.

With Hillary Clinton’s State Department sitting on the beach in Norfolk, the United States will become reviled around the world.

With the Department of Agriculture lying fallow, there will be no more food.  We will all starve.

You might think the price of oil will drop, since without the Dept. of  Transportation, we will all be utterly immobile.   But it won’t matter, since without the Department of Energy, there will be no oil.

With Homeland Security shuttered, only the terrorists will be able to mindlessly vex and grope you.

The the entire chain of command on the unemployment line, the Army’s tanks will immediately rust away, the Navy’s ships will careen out of control into bridge abutments, and all nuclear missiles will spontaneously fire, plunging the world into nuclear winter.

Whew.  Could be ugly!

President Obama may be taking a break from his busy schedule of, apparently, breaks – assuming they avoid the shutdown.

And I found this more than a little bit ominous (emphasis added):

On Thursday morning, the Federal Aviation Administration established a no-fly zone over Williamsburg that will be in place from Friday through Monday.

Not a plane will fly over Williamsburg for month.  And civilian casualties could get quickly out of hand…

This just in;  computer errors and, no doubt, Wisconsin Democrat perfidy continue to change the vote totals in from yesterday’s SCOW vote.

Prosser now might be ahead by forty…

The latest vote count in the state Supreme Court race in Winnebago County indicates incumbent David Prosser is leading Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in votes.

A tally compiled by The Associated Press Wednesday and used by news organizations statewide, including the Journal Sentinel, indicated Kloppenburg was leading the race by 204 votes. Figures on Winnebago County’s website are now different from those collected by the AP.

Winnebago County’s numbers say Prosser received 20,701 votes to Kloppenburg’s 18,887. The AP has 19,991 for Prosser to Kloppenburg’s 18,421.

The new numbers would give Prosser 244 more votes, or a 40-vote lead statewide.

…or maybe 7,000:

After Tuesday night’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election, a computer error in heavily Republican Waukesha County failed to send election results for the entire City of Brookfield to the Associated Press. The error, revealed today, would give incumbent Supreme Court Justice David Prosser a net 7,381 votes against his challenger, attorney Joanne Kloppenburg. On Wednesday, Kloppenburg declared victory after the AP reported she finished the election with a 204-vote lead, out of nearly 1.5 million votes cast.

On election night, AP results showed a turnout of 110,000 voters in Waukesha County — well short of the 180,000 voters that turned out last November, and 42 percent of the county’s total turnout. By comparison, nearly 90 percent of Dane County voters who cast a ballot in November turned out to vote for Kloppenburg.

Prior to the election, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus was heavily criticized for her decision to keep the county results on an antiquated personal computer, rather than upgrade to a new data system being utilized statewide. Nickolaus cited security concerns for keeping the data herself — yet when she reported the data, it did not include the City of Brookfield, whose residents cast nearly 14,000 votes.

I’ll cop to it: I’m hoping for the 7,000.

I talked with a MN state legislator last night.  It was a Republican from the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, by the way, although not one who is regarded as among the most conservative of the lot (and before anyone asks, it was not Rep. Banaian).

Being somewhat new to having interest in the budget process, I wanted to know more about the “Fiscal Notes” that the Democrats are yapping about.

Is the GOP bypassing them because they are products of Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB), which is a partisan office (its head, Jim Schowalter, was appointed by Gov. Dayton, who can also remove him).

“That’s part of it”, the legislator responded.  But there’s more.

More important than the partisanship is the fact, says the legislator, that MMB’s modeling does not account for savings to be realized by budget changes.  The models they use for calculating costs of budget iteams, in addition to being weighted toward racking up costs, do not (says the legislator) account for the money to be saved by the changes.  For example, MMB’s response to the GOP’s plan to consolidate the state’s Information Technology (IT) operations, in addition to the absurd cost projections (ten people, tens of millions of dollars), ignored the savings the consolidation would cause.

Now – did the savings get ignored because the MMB’s process isn’t designed to find them, or did they get ignored because MMB is run by a Dayton appointee whose employment depends on keeping his boss happy, ergo defeating the GOP?

Distinction without a difference, I say.

Tuesday is special election time in Senate District 66.  If the name “Ellen Anderson” rings a bell as your Senator, and you would like to see some productive change to the way our state runs, you need to turn up at the polls on Tuesday.

If you live in the light-gray area on this map…

…or know of a conservative, or potential conservative, who does?  You need to get yourself, or those people, to the polls on Tuesday to vote for Greg Copeland.

(If you thought Anderson was just hunky dory – well, don’t worry.   It is your DFL leadership’s position that they “own Saint Paul”.  Their candidate, Mary Jo McGuire, has had the measurements for the office drapes handed down to her as a matter of party policy.  Showing up at the polls would not only be a waste of time – it’d be a confession that you lack faith in the DFL.  Just stay home).

Anyway – the special election is Tuesday.

Now, if you’re a conservative and/or Republican in Saint Paul, you’re used to feeling crushing discouragement as we put up good candidates – sometimes, as in the last CD4 US House race, great candidates – and lose to mindless hamsters like Betty McCollum by absurd margins.

It’s a fact.  I’ve been there.  And I’ve felt it.  The Fourth CD Republican Party has been in the wilderness for close to sixty years; there is not currently an elected GOP candidate anywhere in Ramsey County, and relatively few in the Fourth CD.

But we can change that next week.  There are Republicans out there.  More importantly, there are conservatives out there – some don’t know it yet, and some have given up on going to the polls after decades living under Saint Paul’s idiot machine.

And if we can reach them, we can shock the world.  Or the city, anyway.

So the Greg Copeland for Senate campaign needs volunteers for door-knocking and, especially, phone-banking.  The campaign has had unbelievable turnout so far – but we need more than unbelievable to win this race.  We need miraculous.

And as We The People found out last fall, we can do miracles.

And naturally, fighting the DFL machine costs money; if you can spare a few bucks, the campaign appreciates every nickel; if Greg wins, you’ll make it back in tax savings…

Disclosure: I’m a volunteer for the Copeland for Senate campaign in the SD66 Special Election.

I thought this just the other day:

Read my blog.

Er…

So with the news that Pawlenty staffer Ben Foster had been arrested in Ankeny, Iowa yesterday for drunkenly terrorizing a family, our statesmen leapt into action.

John “Kumar” Lesch – the DFL representative from House District 66A,  tweeted:

Nixon hired thugs to invade Democratic headquarters. Pawlenty’s first hire tries to invade your bedroom. Yep, he hasn’t changed. #stribpol

Not sure if “he” is Pawlenty.  Not sure if Lesch is sure if “he” is Pawlenty, for that matter; even by Twitter’s neo-literate standards, the post is indecipherable.  One wonders if Surly Beer was busy lobbying Lesch at the time.

But it’s a statement worthy of Ryan “Harold” Winkler.  A drunken staffer’s idiot pratfall has the same weight as the coverup of the Watergate break-in? (For that matter –  Nixon hired Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James W. McCord, Jr., Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis? Hm. Who knew?)  Foster was “trying to invade” anyone’s “bedroom?”

Whew.

Good thing Lesch is just a legislator, and doesn’t have anything to do with affecting peoples’ lives.

UPDATE:  Oops – Lesch is a Ramsey County Prosecutor.

Whooie.

UPDATE 2: Lesch was apparently tweeting on his crackberry from the floor of the House yesterday.  He was being hounded by some GOPers on twitter.  He (in bold) was hounding right back.

Wed 8:58 pm — @davidolson91: @johnlesch sounds like you’re a little off today. Maybe you’re just sad you got your ass kicked by someone named Mary Jo. #personalproblem

Wed 9:01 pm — @RyanLyk: RT @davidolson91: @johnlesch sounds like you’re a little off today. Maybe you’re just sad you got your ass kicked by someone named Mary Jo. #personalproblem

Wed 9:53 pm — @davegoblirsch: @johnlesch What’s with the weird tweets today? You really shouldn’t let that special election loss bring you down.

Thurs 12:01 am — @johnlesch: Top 3 groups tracking MN budget vote in dead of night: (1) GOP bloggers living in mom’s basement (2) cab drivers (3) night watchmen.

[Ah, the old “Mom’s Basement” bit.  That one never gets old.  And Lesch is bagging on the GOP for late-night votes?  He does remember the last session, doesn’t he? – Ed]

Thurs 1:01 am — @davidolson91: RT @davegoblirsch: @johnlesch What’s with the weird tweets today? You really shouldn’t let that special election loss bring you down.

Thurs 1:20 am — @davidolson91: @johnlesch still stings about that loss huh? Wish you could be staying up at the Capitol accomplishing things? #timetomoveon #itsover

Thurs 1:28 am — @johnlesch: @davidolson91 Step 1: check your MN House roster, Step 2: self-administer swirlie, Step 3: give mom goodnight hug. #mouthbreathersanonymous

Thurs 1:34 am — @davidolson91: @johnlesch Whoops, didn’t realize you were actually trying to contribute to making laws. But then again, *making* is a the key word there.

Thurs 1:40 am — @johnlesch: @davidolson91 No, the key words are, “out-of-your-league”. Go to bed junior. You’re not ready to play with the big kids. #savehimfromhimself

It’d be interesting to see what “league” Lesch thought he was in.  I was actually looking forward to offering him equal time on the NARN, had he won the primary…

Thurs 1:45 am — @davidolson91: @johnlesch I wonder how long it took you to understand #twitter? Old farts like you are supposed to shun the new fangled technology? Right?

Thurs 2:02 am — @RyanLyk: @johnlesch funny to see you get so defensive and disrespectful towards @davidolson91 #rolemodel

Thurs 2:41 am — @davidolson91: RT @RyanLyk: @johnlesch funny to see you get so defensive and disrespectful towards @davidolson91 #rolemodel

Thus 8:01 am — @ErikLeist: Rep @johnlesch displayed downright disrespectful behavior last night on twitter while on the house floor http://twitpic.com/4hw9n4 #stribpol

Yeah, having people peck at you on Twitter gets old.  The key to it is to ignore the ones that don’t matter. I do it all the time, in case anyone asks…

They don’t matter – do they?

The number one story yesterday – a peon Pawlenty staffer got hammered in Ankeny, Iowa, and while drunk out of his mind, tried to get into the wrong house.

Daughter got scared, father got the gun (and, thankfully, realized what was going on), and it’s a big story.

Of course, living next to a college, this is not an unusual thing; I had the same exact thing (minus the gun and the campaign connection) two months ago.

The lesson is this; if you’re going to be a peon staffer who gets hammered and does somethings stupid out in the middle of nowhere, for God’s sake don’t be a Republican.

Businesses along the Central Corridor are already suffering terribly – and not a single inch of track has been laid in Saint Paul.

But fear not; the city springs to the rescue with…a discount card.

As a business owner from University and Raymond told me, “Light Rail scares away customers, so we have to lose more money to lure them back”.

No word if the discount card will find you a place to park.

Saint Paul homeowner puts up a statue of Christ in his garden.

On his property.

Did I mention it was in Saint Paul?  Where there are no property rights?

Jesus is said to have walked on water, but according to the St. Paul City Council he can’t stand at the edge of a Mississippi River bluff.

On a 5-2 vote, the council Wednesday rejected Tuan Pham’s request for a zoning variance to keep his back-yard statue of Jesus in the current spot high up on the West Side bluffs.

Mind you, it’s a variance.  Not a change in the law.  A variance.  For a statue.  In a private garden.

Pham, 76 and a retired Frogtown grocer, erected the 7-foot Jesus on a 10-foot base at his home on the 200 block of Isabel Avenue, placing it closer to the edge of the bluff than city rules permit.

“Give me the gift of hope for the future,” Pham pleaded with the council before the evening vote.

Sorry, Mr. Pham.  It’ll take a miracle to bring hope to the future of Saint Paul – and the Saint Paul City Council has outlawed miracles.

Mr. Pham has been on the target of the Council’s contempt for private property before:

No one spoke against the variance and Mike “Sammy” Samuelson spoke of how Pham was a “pioneer” in the revitalization of University Avenue. He said Pham’s statue, “is more of a garden; I’d liken it to a gnome, it’s a big gnome.”

Pham’s Jesus is a replica of the Christ of Vung Tua, a 105-foot monument in Vietnam. Pham emigrated from Vietnam in 1980.

He was a pioneer in revitalizing a street that the City Council has spent a decade working overtime to destroy.

Council Members Dan Bostrom and Pat Harris argued that Pham be allowed to keep the statue in its spot, saying it didn’t violate zoning laws because it is a garden, not a “development.”

But Council President Kathy Lantry and Council Member Dave Thune said the ordinance is clear that in Mississippi River Corridor, a 40-foot setback from the bluff edge is required for any “material change in the use” of the land.

Lantry said the core legal question is: “Tell me why this property can’t be put to a reasonable use without this variance.” She said the variance isn’t needed for reasonable use.

So the City Council says decorating one’s garden, on one’s private property, is not a “reasonable use?”

UPDATE: According to Channel 9 news, the whole flap started as a neighbor complaint.  45 other neighbors petitioned the city to keep the statue.

Saint Paul – the city where your property rights are only as safe as  your best-connected neighbor wants you to be.

Last year, around election day, I posted a piece of video from Crow Wing County.  Monty Jensen, a disabled veteran, recounted seeing a group of disabled people being, he alleges, coached through the process of voting (not illegal), and, Jensen claimed, having their ballots filled out for them.  Which is not illegal if it involves assisting a voter with exercising their wishes re their own legal franchise – nobody, least of all Jensen, has ever argued this.

But it is illegal if it’s a case of glorified ballot stuffing – say, if someone “assists” someone who is mentally-incompetent and not legally allowed to vote.

Now, as we saw a while ago, Minnesota law may be a bit ambiguous about how guardianship affects someone’s franchise.

But when we last looked at this story, we met Jim Stene, a resident of the Clark Lake Group Home in Brainerd.   And according to his father, Al Stene, there is nothing ambiguous about the fact that Jim should not be voting.

Now Fox News’ Eric Shawn is on the story – and in the report, it seems there’s nothing ambiguous to Al Stene about his son’s state:

Minnesota resident Jim Stene voted last November — and thought he was casting his ballot for President Gerald Ford.

“He was exploited, plain and simple. He was exploited,” his father, Alan Stene, charges. “This is a moral and ethical issue.”

Jim Stene, 35, suffers from anoxic encephalopathy, severe brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. He has lived with the condition since 1987, when, as a 12-year-old boy, he jumped into a river to save the life of his drowning sister, Heather.

Jim Stene’s story is tragic enough.

Stene had spent the last 15 years living in a group home in Brainerd, Minn. He and other residents of the home were taken to the Crow Wing County auditor’s office on Oct. 29 to vote by absentee ballot. Minnesota is among the states that offer early voting by absentee ballot days before Election Day.

In an affidavit, Stene’s father charges that “a voter crime was committed … because James is mentally incompetent and is very coachable.”

He fears his son, and others like him across the country, could be used to swing elections.

“They are a forgotten member of our society, I think, to where people can exploit them because nobody really knows what goes on behind the scenes,” Alan Stene said.

“I felt that he was used as a pawn.”

Shawn reportedly spent quite a bit of time with Jim Stene over a weekend in Brainerd in February.  I’ve added emphasis:

Fox News met Stene at a private residence, with his sister beside him, and asked him about voting. While his words came slowly, he clearly understood the conversation, smiling and trying to do his best to answer. When asked who he voted for, he answered quietly, “Ford.” Gerald Ford? Stene nodded in the affirmative.

He was unable to name the candidates or any current elected officials, and he said a worker at the group home where he lived told him for whom to vote. They didn’t move his hand or mark it for him, he said, “just told me who to vote for.” He “did not have a clue” about the person he voted for. And when asked to identify the current president, he said, “Bush, I think.”

The owner of the chain of group homes where Stene lived denies the charges:

“Did Clark Lake (Group Home), on a whim, decide to take this person and sneak them down to the poll? Absolutely not. It’s so ridiculous, it’s absurd,” [Lynn Peterson, owner of the Clark Lake Group Homes where Stene lived] told Fox News.

“As a provider, what did I do? I gave him a ride to the polls and I gave him a ride home.” Peterson says Stene and several others voted in full view of local county election workers, and he affirmed that he and his staff were supporting the legal right of their residents to cast a ballot, the same as people without disabilities.

“As a provider, my job is to provide assistance to handicapped people if they choose to vote,” said Peterson. “At no time were they to be assisted in how to vote.”

Stene – and Monty Jensen, and his girlfriend – claim otherwise.  Those claims would seem to warrant an investigation…

…which was done, more or less.  The Crow Wing County Sheriff’s department investigated the claims – in a line of questioning that led them to talk with Monty Jensen’s estranged father, with whom Jensen hasn’t spoken in years and who was utterly unconnected to the case, but somehow did not lead them to talk with Monty Jensen’s girlfriend.

[Peterson] added that he thinks a care provider should be “somebody that is going to be an advocate, a strong advocate for the people with a disability that have the ability to participate with the voting process or any other process in the community.”

But Stene’s family disagrees.

“Jim is not capable of making those type of decisions, to know what the candidates are and what the issues are,” his father said. And his sister said she “could not believe this was even an issue” and that he was taken to vote.

As she sat next to her sibling who saved her life, tears welled up.

“I just don’t think that he is competent enough,” she said. “I mean, he is my brother and I love him very, very much, and that’s why I personally go vote.”

She also said she “is glad it has gotten this far because there will be more recognition for other people, and for my brother. He has the right for who he wants to vote for, but I honestly don’t think he could vote.” Peterson says Jim Stene wanted to vote. Stene told Fox News he was not asked if he wanted to vote.

In Minnesota, only a judge can determine if a person is incompetent to vote and take away that right. That has not happened in Stene’s case.

So the question is not “was Stene disenfranchised”; the question is “was he exploited by the staff at his group home?”

Read the rest of Shawn’s story.

Illinois cops now supporting Shall-Issue:

Leaders of the Illinois Assn. of Chiefs of Police voted Wednesday to change their stance on the issue. They now support legalizing concealed carry.

It’s a big boost for those trying to repeal Illinois’s ban on the concealed carrying of handguns. The group of top cops had long opposed the idea. They voted two years to go neutral on the issue.

State Rep. Brandon Phelps (D-Harrisburg) and leaders of the Illinois State Rifle Assn. have been negotiating for months with law enforcement officials across the state. Phelps is chief sponsor of a concealed carry proposal that’s already won approval from a committee of the Illinois House.

Phelps said the measure will likely be amended further. He hopes the General Assembly will send it to Gov. Quinn by the end of April.

As currently written, the Phelps proposal says the Illinois State Police “shall issue” a concealed carry handgun permit within 75 days after an application is submitted.

This would go a long way toward making Chicago put up or shut up after the McDonald decision.

And that’s a good thing.

As you know – because I keep telling you – I’m volunteering for the Copeland for Senate campaign in the SD66 Special Election.

Which is coming up Tuesday.

Here’s the deal: the DFL isn’t doing any campaigning to speak of.  Indeed, I think they have to avoid campaigning; to have to actually work in a special election would mean they knew their claim “we own Saint Paul” was hollow.   Former sta. te representative Betty Jo McGuire seems to be running her “campaign” entirely behind the scenes

Which means this thing is winnable.  It won’t be easy – it’ll involve getting every single Republican in SD66 to turn out next Tuesday.

If you are a Republican in SD88 – or a Democrat who’s sick of the way your party is abusing our state – then your mission is clear; show up and vote Tuesday.

But wherever you live, you can help out.

The campaign is looking for volunteers, for door-knocking and especially for phone- banking, for Thursday through Monday.  If you can help, here’s how you can get involved.

And fighting the DFL machine costs money; if you can spare a few bucks, the campaign appreciates every nickel; if Greg wins, you’ll make it back in tax savings…

Yesterday, I told you that the League of Women Voters had scheduled a debate for tonight in the SD66 special election, between GOP-endorsed candidate Greg Copeland and DFL primary victor Mary Jo McGuire.

Yesterday? McGuire’s people told the LWV that McGuire was bailing on the debate.

Why can not a single CD4 DFLer ever face their critics and challengers?

What are they afraid of?

That anger over the dislocation over the Central Corridor will make the hot reception Betty McCollum got over Obamacare seem like a warm stroll in the park?

As the GOP in the Minnesota Legislature drives toward a budget – and does it a solid month earlier than the Democrats managed it in the past session – the Dems’ latest chanting point is that “the budget doesn’t’ agree with the fiscal notes!”

And it sounds pretty serious…

…oh, who am I kidding.  As much as I’ve followed politics over the years, as of yesterday I had absolutely no idea what a “fiscal note” was.

The Bad News:  The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is very, very close, and may  be headed for a recount.

But conservative candidate David Prosser is currently leading extremist whackdoodle liberal JoAnne Kloppenberg by a razor-thin margin…

…that might be headed for a recount, and thence to lawsuits with all sorts of union-paid lawyers that wind up in front of the very court for whom the elections are being held. Which is deadlocked.

But even with 99% of the vote counted, fewer than 600 votes – about 0.04% of ballots – separated the candidates. And The Associated Press said early Wednesday that the race was too close to call and that it would take hours or most of the day to get a final tally.

That close margin had political insiders from both sides talking about the possibility of a recount, which Wisconsin has avoided in statewide races in recent decades. Any recount could be followed by lawsuits – litigation that potentially would be decided by the high court.

The good news?  The election – held as Wisconsin is still up in arms (almost literally) over the collective bargaining squabble – shows on a statewide level that the Dems’ much-ballyhooed recall effort is likely, for the most part, to squib.

If you listen to some conservatives, you might almost forget we won the elections last November.

The GOP House in DC isn’t cutting fast enough.  The GOP majorities in the Minnesota Legislature are living within the state’s means, not slashing the budget.

Some of the complaints are the  mark of the kind of people I used to run into the Libertarian Party; people for whom principle is blessedly unblemished by the need to actually deal with an opposition and still eke legislation out of the mess and have it turn out, if not perfect, at least better, often much better, than what you have.

Still, as I told people the last time I spoke at a Tea Party, the real job for we The People started last November 3.  It’s our job to  light up the switchboards, to fill up the inboxes electronic and literal, and to show our elected representatives that the vast wellspring of discontent that tossed much of the sitting Democrat government – and not a few RINOs – under the bus is still alive and well.

And it’s high time we made sure they knew it.

So I’m happy to report there’ll be another Tea Party rally on Saturday, April 16 at noon at the State Capitol.  And I’m equally happy to report I’ll be the lead-off speaker again (before dashing down to the station).

And I do hope you show up.  Because government is too important to leave to government.

Posting will be very light today.

Very, very busy.

The League Of Women Voters is holding a debate between the candidates in the SD66 election.

It’s tomorrow at 6PM at the Hamline Midway Library.

Greg Copeland – the GOP-endorsed candidate running against DFL-and-union endorsed Professor Mary Jo McGuire – could use a cheering section!

Hope to see you there!

When Barack Obama was running for and/or fairly new in office, the left – and others who are impressed with such things – were all dewy-eyed over Barack Obama’s “intelligence” – as measured by the toniness of the diplomas on his wall.

He was an Ivy Leaguer, of course – ending the long national nightmare of our presidential Ivy League drought.

But as I pointed out at the time, not only is the toniness of ones’ degree utterly immaterial to ones suitability for the Presidency, there’s a case to be made that an Ivy League degree (other than in, say, medicine, hard sciences or physics) is a liability in the real world.

P.J. O’Rourke – one of the people who turned me conservative, and a fellow grad of an obscure school (he: Miami of Ohio) – agrees:

Barack Obama went to an Ivy League school, not that he’s doing very well in his career at the moment. Let’s check on the most successful people in America. Sarah Palin went to the University of Idaho. Warren Buffet went to Nebraska. John Boehner went to Xavier. Glenn Beck didn’t go to college at all [to say nothing of Limbaugh – Ed.]. And I’m not sure whether Justin Bieber’s mother even finished high school. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates did go to Harvard but​…​they dropped out.

O’Rouke is actually responding to Amy Chua, Ivy League professor and author of Tiger Mom, a manifesto on raising children to take up more space in the Ivy League.   But the larger point – the one that applies to our President – is…:

Amy Chua, I’ve got bad news. “A” students work for “B” students. Or not even. A businessman friend of mine corrected me. “No, P. J.,” he said, “ ‘B’ students work for ‘C’ students. ‘A’ students teach.”

And that, really, sums up The One.  He came; he studied; he punched the tickets one must punch to be a Chicago Democrat.

And as with an awful lot of Ivy Leaguers whose main stated qualification is that they were Ivy Leaguers, not a whole lot else.

The DFL has said it in as many words; they “own” – or think they own – Saint Paul.

The vote results don’t seem to challenge ’em much.  I think the best Republican result in Saint Paul – a great year for the GOP – was in the high twenties.

But while it’s been over 25 years since a Republican represented any part of Saint Paul in the legislature, and over sixty since a Republican represented the district in Washington, it’s not entirely a matter of the DFL’s strength.  Fact is while the demographics (lots of government employees and clients) favor the DFL, there are Republicans, and conservatives, out there; in 2000, Dennis Newinski got 46% against Betty McCollum in the 4th CD election.  It can be done.

The DFL’s forgotten it, of course.

On April 12 – a week from Tuesday – there will be a special election in Senate District 66.

Now, you’d never know it from listening to the DFL.  They had their primary last Tuesday (former state rep Mary Jo McGuire beat Rep. John Lesch (66A) and some other hamster).  Their apparatchiks said “the election is over!  Congrats, Senator McGuire!”

Maybe they’re right.

But wouldn’t it be cool if their smug, entitled assumption were wrong?

You can help.  Money helps, of course – the Greg Copeland campaign has already raised vastly more money than any other legislative campaign in Saint Paul – but it could use more.

But the campaign also needs volunteers – especially for Thursday through Monday, the big push.   We need phone bankers and door-knockers to help get out every single Republican vote in SD66.  Every person that has ever voted GOP; every single person that has ever shown up at a caucus, every person who ever sang “America, F*** Yeah!”, whatever.

Is it an uphill fight?  But it’s one we can win.

And perhaps more importantly, it’s a way to build a 4th CD GOP that can make the DFL have to fight for the city.

Because if the GOP consistently gets over 40% of the vote in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the DFL will never win another statewide office in Minnezota. No DFL governors.  No Senators.  No Constitutional Officers.  Nothing.

The future starts this week in Saint Paul.   Hope you can help!

Disclosure: I am a volunteer on the Copeland campaign.

Lori Sturdevant plays plays chicken and egg with Minnesota’s polarization.

Is Minnesota poltitics “polarized” because there’s a “chasm” between the parties?

Or is it the opposite?

I get that. But it could be that the converse is also true.

My notion: Minnesota Republicans and DFLers are so polarized today because they compromised too infrequently…

I read that bit and thought “maybe she’s onto something.  Maybe Sturdevant will reference the generations of complete obeisance to the DFL’s tax and spend machine, “opposed” by a MNGOP that actively squelched conservatism and gave Minnesota net double-digit budget increases, biennium over biennium, leaving Minnesota overtaxed and overstaffed and leaving Minnesota conservatives with several generations of catch-up to play?

Could it be that Sturdevant has perhaps widened her razor-thin sense of selective context?

…in the past decade.

HELL no!

Too many legislative sessions produced a win-lose result — governor wins, Legislature loses.

The power tools available to a governor who wanted smaller government than the Legislature did made it too convenient for him to have his way.

That’s right; Minnesota is “too partisan” because Republicans, operating within the boundaries of the law, did what they were sent to Saint Paul to do. Just like Democrats – with Sturdevant’s, and most of the rest of the media’s, blessing – when they get sent to Saint Paul.

Majorities change.  But Lori Sturdevant’s DFL cheerleading is truly eternal.

In what will no doubt be the top story among America’s three wars and myriad economic problems all week,  Katie Couric is…

…leaving her anchor post at “CBS Evening News” less than five years after becoming the first woman to solely helm a network TV evening newscast.

As far as keeping Libya out of the news, it’ll have to do until Charlie Sheen does something stupid again.

Wisconsin shopkeepers respond to the union’s offer they can’t refuse…

Here’s the contact information for Senator Chamberlain.

Here are the details for the Minnesota Warriors.