Gallup released a poll earlier this week showing that Americans’ cold feet about voting for a Mormon for President has been holding steady for a long, long time:

Though the vast majority of Americans say they would vote for their party’s nominee for president in 2012 if that person happens to be a Mormon, 22% say they would not, a figure largely unchanged since 1967.

Here’s the part that I did and didn’t expect:

The new Gallup poll, conducted June 9-12, finds nearly 20% of Republicans and independents saying they would not support a Mormon for president. That is slightly lower than the 27% of Democrats saying the same.

So now we see which party is really clogged with bigotry and hatred.

Nah.  I’m a kidder.  I kid.  Maybe it’s just that the libs’ most prominent Mormon is Harry Reid.

It makes sense now, doesn’t it?

I didnt’ write it, but I wish I had:

Top 5 Things

Pass it along.

There may be a Thing #6 to keep in mind as well; although “we” – or the 43% of our neighbors who really aren’t concerned enough about this state’s future to realize what an eternal road to Palookaville “progressivism” is – elected Governor Dayton, he’s not really running the executive branch.

More on Monday.

Since Governor Dayton isn’t doing any actual work, like setting up a special session or anything, the MNGOP has a bit of homework for him.

62211 Worksheet

Of course, he won’t do it – but it’d be interesting if he did.

He’s not doing it, by the way, because he doesn’t have permission from the people who actually pull his strings.

More on that on Monday.

…of bad blogging Thursdays isn’t going to break today.

Just saying.

I’ve restrained myself ably, if I say so myself.

But after the better part of a decade of reading peoples’ bumper stickers, I just gotta way it.

I’m already against Obama’s next war. .

Throughout this series, I’ve been focusing on the smaller stories behind the big stories of World War 2 – one of mankind’s most defining event.  Little things that have been nearly lost to popular history; the myths behind things that popular culture and the government have told us about the war over the years.

But there’s nothing small about today’s piece.

It was seventy years ago today that the greatest single cataclysm in human history started.   It involved the most soldiers of any battle in history; seven million combatants on the first day, a total of 12 million men involved by the time winter fell, the first wave of a four year long battle that would involve tens of millions of soldiers, and leave tens of millions – 4-5 million Germans, over 25 million from the USSR, military and civilian.

The phase of the war that started on this date in 1941 – Unternehmen Barbarossa in German, for “Operation Barbarossa”, a reference to Friedrich the First, the Holy Roman Emperor who’d conquered northern Italy hundreds of years before  – was an attack by almost four million German soldiers and 3,500 tanks, on a front over a thousand miles wide.  It had three major objectives; in the north, seize the Russian approaches to the Baltic Sea at Leningrad, to forever safeguard the German coast from enemy naval attack; in the south, to take the agricultural heartland of Ukraine, and beyond them the oil fields of the Caucusus; in the center, the drive through the Russian heartland to Moscow to try to decapitate the Soviet government.

Every history book tells you that much.

Beyond that?  The four year war in the East reset the counter on “bloody” for all human history – so much, indeed, that it is incomprehensible to Americans today how bloody it was.  “The Eastern Front” had an air of menace on Hogan’s Heroes, an aura of Stalingrad and the frozen hell of the steppes and reek of death wafting over the taiga, which made trivial the fact that in four years, over 30 million people – soldiers, civilians, everyone – died.   There is no way to comprehend human numbers like that.

German soldiers accompany a tank across the steppe. As vaunted as were the mechanized Panzer divisions, most of Germany's military was horse-drawn, and could not keep up - a key part of the failure to take Moscow.

A smaller chunk?  OK – the casualties in Barbarossa – from June 22 to December 5, 1941, when the war entered its next phase, the hellish frozen stalemate at the gates of Moscow – totalled 1.2 million German and Soviet dead (including 800,000 that the Soviets would admit to; it was likely much higher).  Even taking the Soviets at their word, that’s more than the total of American dead from all of our wars in the past 236 years combined.  In under six months.  The Soviets suffered twice as many dead in these six months than the United Stated did in the entire war, and that’s just counting immediate, documented combat casualties; if you add in all the Soviet prisoners of war captured just during these six months that died in captivity, the Soviets lost three times as many people – by their own admission – as all the Americans that have died in every war in our history.

Soviet POWs march into captivity. 3 million Soviet soldiers were captured during Barbarossa. Less than 5% survived the war.

In six months.

And that was just the appetizer for the most intense orgy of bloodletting in human history – a war whose repercussions are still felt today; the historic wary paranoia of the Russians was supercharged; the horrors of the war turned the Germans from a warlike people to an exceedingly pacific one almost overnight, in historic terms.

And the machinery of the Holocaust?  The extermination camps of eastern Poland?  The invasion gave them cover (and charged interest in 1945, when trains that should have hauled supplies to the German Army were diverted to haul Jews around).

German soldier examines a dead Russian, and a blazing BT-7 tank.

But we had a long way to go to get to any of that.  By this time of the day, 70 years ago, the German Luftwaffe had destroyed 2,000 Soviet planes – many on the ground, shot up in long straight rows just like the Americans planes at Wheeler Field in Hawaii would be on December 7, only by the scores of hundreds rather than dozens – for a loss of 35 of their own.

Russian planes - Polikarpov trainers in this case - destroyed by a German dive bomber attack.

By the end of day three, nearly 4,000 Russian planes had been knocked out, and the Germans had complete air supremacy along the entire front.

The big story – that the Germans drove to the gates of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, but were bogged down first by poor logistics, then by autumn rains, then finally a fearsome Russian winter.

German tanks and "half-track" personnel carriers roll past blazing Russian tanks and buildings.

All that’s well in the future.

Seventy years ago today, the biggest meatgrinder in all human history was teeing up with a vengeance.

I got an email from a friend of mine who works in Information Technology:

I was riding in a van last night with a state worker (going to our sons’ soccer game). He said that the state workers are being “laid off” this time rather than furloughed like in 2005. Furlough means that they basically take time off without pay, which many businesses have done to prevent layoffs.

It makes sense, in many cases; give out unpaid “vacation” so that workers

Dayton wants layoffs so the state workers can immediately apply for unemployment benefits (benefiting the unions).

Not to mention pumping up the utilization of that state service, to plump up future budget requests.

It also means that from an IT perspective, they have to shutdown workers computer/system access, return their computers. Essentially follow all the normal steps if someone was laid off without the prospect of returning or if they had turned in their notice of resignation. Incredibly wasteful, given that it isn’t the intent to permanently get rid of the state workers.

The DFL wants to show the people  of Minnesota who’s boss.

When you get any group of insular, echo-chamber-dwelling, chanting-points-motivated people who communicate with each other and almost nobody else, it’s a virtually inevitable trait of human nature that they will develop a worldview that centers on…well, them.   It doesn’t matter if it’s Packers fans, Manhattanites, Kansas sorghum farmers, Ivy Leaguers, bowlers, avant-guard music fans, square dancers…

But our Twin Cities’ “progressive” “alternative”  media are especially funny.

Eric “Big E” Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project wrote about the Strib’s coverage of last weekend’s “Netroots Nation”.  Or, he complains, lack of coverage:

I was at Netroots Nation so I wasn’t paying attention to my newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Apparently, the Strib didn’t even send a reporter to Netroots. This time someone else noticed that their coverage of politics is not very thorough:

Pusey links to a piece at Crooks and Liars, a rhetorical dutch oven echoblog.  Astute observers of the regional media scene will get a chuckle:

Now, I expect that local readers will tell me that the Minneapolis paper is a long-established right-wing Republican rag, and gauging from their Sunday editorial-page lineup, that certainly is the impression I came away with.

[Facepalm – Ed.]

And no doubt it is despised by the PowerLines of the world for not being right-wing enough, which then becomes their excuse — “See? Both sides hate us! Therefore, we must be exactly right in the middle!”

This is what passes for logic on their side.

So to be honest, I wasn’t really surprised to see that the Star-Tribune, as I perused it over my coffee and hashbrowns this morning, had actually completely ignored the presence of Netroots Nation in their city and carried not a single word about events there. And indeed, if you check their archives, they couldn’t even be bothered to send a single reporter over to the convention center this week to write about the many luminaries there. Instead, their coverage consisted entirely pieces filed by Associated Press reporters. Oh, wait — there was one piece by a columnist that talked about Netroots and its deeper meaning without any indication he’d ever set foot in the convention.

That’s just embarrassing.

Yes, but not in the way that the writer intended.

Pusey picks up the narrative:

But it’s even worse than that. They spent the weekend lavishing column inches upon the much smaller, conservative Right Online convention which shadows Netroots wherever it goes:

And why might that be?

Netroots Nation – the annual gathering of the lefty echo chamber in some hapless city – was a massive clot of angry leftybloggers and media types, angrily declaiming their anger.

It was nothing but an anger convention.  There was nothing of any news interest there, beyond the lefty “alt”-media’s apparent need to feel noticed.

In news terms, it’s not even dog bites dog.  It’s dog licks dog.

And RightOnline – a smaller event, as Pusey correctly notes – normally isn’t even that much.

Except for the three serious presidential candidates who spoke.

And the omnipresence of Andrew Breitbart, who broke not only the biggest political story of the past few months – Weinergate – and endured weeks of agenda-based hazing from the establishment media and lefty “alternative” crowd (before being proven 100% correct in every way), and James O’Keefe, who has also launched some newsworthy bombshells [and endured months of agenda-driven hazing from the establishment and lefty “alt” medias (before being proven 100% correct in every way ] was a bit newsworthy too.

Now, it’s not entirely true that there was no news at Netroots.  Breitbart’s hysterically hysterical reception by the Sorosphere’s dingos when he sauntered into the Convention, and the frothing anger at Obama provided the only real “news” at Netroots.

But Breitbart’s promenade was unplanned (or at least the dead-tree media weren’t cc’ed on it), and the anger at Obama – well, it undercuts Pusey’s and “Crooks’…” spin, doesn’t it?  If the Strib were a GOP-leaning rag, they’d be happy to show Obama eroding among the True Believers, woudn’t they?

I thought about ending the post there – but the C’nL “writer” lurched from solipsism into delusion next:

But then I nearly blorted my coffee out onto the rag when I came across Bob Von Sternberg’s loving coverage of the Republican luminaries at the Right Online conference, complete with big pictures of Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, which meant that they not only sent a reporter, there was a Star-Trib photographer there as well. (Von Sternberg wrote a second piece, for online readers, about Right Online as well.

Bob Von Sternberg? This Bob Von Sternberg?  “Loving” conservatives?

In the special little world of the lefty “alt” media, apparently covering the news, to say nothing of the odd fitful attempt at balance, is bias.

While the Legislative GOP warns Minnesotans about what DFL rule will bring, one group of Minnesotans is living it today.

Businesses along University Avenue in Saint Paul are learning what it means to be “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota”.

A business owner along Uni writes (anonymously, because businesses that offend the mother city tend to get more visits from city inspectors):

They (met council) finally have the loan application available for us businesses (that was mentioned in their April news release).

It’s late June.  Just saying.

Funny, it’s 13 pages of incredibly detailed information and requirements of us….but I don’t remember approving these folks’ use of my tax money to build their worthless light rail.

I have to prove my business is worthy of their loan, but they don’t have to prove their light rail is worthy of ruining our business.

Sigh.

Just keep repeating to yourself “I’m happy to pay for a better Minnesota”.

I say this still holding out hope that we will survive. There’s a chance we will. Things aren’t as dire as they could be…we’re hanging on…but barely these past couple months!

Here’s the loan app & info…just came out today:

Loan application:

http://stpaul.gov/DocumentView.aspx?DID=16866

Flyer about the loan program is attached.

And it’s interesting to see what a goverment bureaucrat’s idea of “help” for a businessperson is:

Max loan, by the way is $20,000. Last I checked we are $10,000 down this May compared with last May. That is ONE month. I mean, if we actually meet all their qualifications, we’ll gladly take the loan/grant/whatever, but it will help make a dent for maybe 2 months during the how-many-years construction? Again, not being ungrateful…just saying, I don’t think these people realize how much it costs small businesses, especially restaurants, to operate day-to-day. We need to average $20,000-$30,000 per month in gross sales to simply survive, if that puts things in perspective…we are the definition of small! lol.

Even better?  The bureaucrat’s idea of what it means to talk to businesspeople:

Business resources

http://stpaul.gov/index.aspx?NID=4533

But wait! They will save us with brochures!

This link goes to their “ready for rail checklist” to help businesses thrive during construction.

Array

It is insulting to my intelligence as a business owner. I read it an literally said to myself, “are you f-ing kidding me?”

How patronizing these people are! We have done every single thing on this list, except “attend their workshops” because, well, we are busy running our business. Nothing on their stupid check list will change the fact that nobody wants to drive near the mess that is University Ave. Nothing on the checklist will make customers choose to take a longer lunch break because it takes them so long to get to us.

Well, good thing they told us to simply “reduce overhead and operating costs in advance of construction.” Gee, really? I had never thought of trying to reduce costs until I read your brochure! Thanks! I suppose if we stop paying employees and stop buying food we can reduce costs (seriously…day to day we are forever working to never miss an opportunity to reduce costs….most businesses are…like I said…this checklist is insulting).

OK…enough venting again. I could go through every bullet point on their list & tell you how worthless it is….because none of their items actually reduces traffic congestion or creates parking.

To the bureaucrats in St. Paul ,Ramco, the Met Council and the State, empty buildings means cheap rent for non-profits!

Support your University Avenue businesses.  Goodness knows your state isn’t.

In North Dakota, at least in my lifetime, all flooding west of the Red River is compared to the Great Flood of 1969.  That year, pretty much every major town in the state – Fargo, Grand Forks, Jamestown, Minot, Bismarck – was inundated with runoff from record snow and rain falls.  It was the standard by which all subsequent floods – 1981, 1997, and the past couple of years along the Red, Missouri and James – have been measured.

And none of those floods, not even 1969, holds a candle to what’s projected for Minot – where my mother, incidentally, lives, although thankfully on very high ground – and other communities along the Souris River in coming weeks.

The highest flows ever recorded on the Souris are approaching a city whose defenses are destined to be over run. Can the city hold?

Dikes currently in place, recently improved greatly to combat high flows, are now expected to disappear under the traveling torrent. The amount of water flowing with a vengeance down the Souris River Valley is forecast to inundate Minot to a level seven to eight feet higher than the catastrophic and benchmark flood of 1969.

Picture a flood eight feet higher than the highest flooding ever recorded in your riverfront town.  Eight feet.

Saddened with that horrific knowledge, officials announced during a late afternoon press conference Monday that very little can be done to stop the powerful onslaught. Massive secondary dikes that were built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to save much of the town from the previous high on the Souris this year fall far short of defending against the impending and rapid rise of the Souris.

My mom’s house is already crowded with refugees from the earlier flooding.  It’s going to get worse:

Mandatory evacuations were ordered Monday for all evacuation zones within Minot. Mayor Curt Zimbelman said all affected residents and businesses must vacate those areas no later than 10 p.m. Wednesday. Within minutes of the announcement residents once again began the laborious and hastened work of moving out of their homes for the second time this year.

“It’s a sad day in Minot,” Zimbelman said at the end of a press conference Monday.

Although Minot was always Jamestown’s hereditary sports rival – cake-eating bastards that they were –  my prayers do go out to them.  This sounds just awful, with water flows triple that of this spring’s already-bad floods:

“It’s pretty easy to get to 23,000 cfs, which is bearing down on Sherwood as we speak,” said Alan Schlag, Monday. Schlag is a hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Bismarck.

For comparison purposes, the previous peak flow at Sherwood this year, one which caused great concern at all points downstream, was a mere 8,860 cfs.

“Basically, Canada is pouring the coals to releases from dams. Rafferty is wide open, Alameda upped to 1,800 Monday and Boundary was at about 5,000 cfs,” said Schlag.

How bad is it?  Bad enough to get a roomful of North Dakotans – classic Scandinavian and German passive-aggressives (I can say that, I’m one of ’em) who let loose in full pent-up fury that’d shame a roomful of big-haired Long-Island Italans when dealing with government at any level – to sit down in a daze:

The crowd at Monday’s City Hall press conference sat in stunned silence, followed by a few brief murmurs, when it was revealed that releases into the Souris from Lake Darling Dam would be ramped up to “16 or 17,000 cfs by Thursday.” Minot’s existing dike system laborously protects against 10,000 cfs. The previous high release for Lake Darling prior to this flood event was less than 5,000 cfs. Numbers all along the Souris are similarly stunning, shocking and, ultimately, saddening.

I’d been planning on going there this summer.  Sounds like I’d best bring boots and a shovel.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The media is fond of trotting out Political Science teachers to opine on political topics. Here’s one I’d like to see them asked:

In a system with three co-equal branches, what is the legal basis for the Court to run the state if the Legislature and Governor won’t? Where was that specific power granted by the people to the Courts in the State or Federal Constitution, or in state law?

For those of you for whom “what is actually in the law?” is an important point, it’s a worthwhile question.

My guess is there is no such specific grant of authority, the courts simply step in. Why? Because somebody has to? Not so, governments can and do shut down, sometimes for a week (last Minnesota shut-down), sometimes longer (Belgium hasn’t had a government for a year, Somalia, ever).

Because there will be terrible consequences? True, the blame for which will fall on the Legislature and the Governor. But how does that give the Ramsey County District Court power to act as Dictator-In-Reserve?

My guess:  “Progressives” abhor a power vacuum, provided they can be the ones to fill it.

Dumping this problem on the courts is too easy. It relieves the pressure on both the Legislature and the Governor to alleviate the problems that a true shut-down would cause. Imagine the public pressure if the prison gates really were thrown open, road construction projects abandoned incomplete, the courthouses shuttered.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court last week took the right approach regarding the collective bargaining law, telling the district court “It might be a stupid law but by substituting your opinion for theirs, you’re pooping in the Legislature’s pool; stop it.”

That would involve  having some respect for the idea of separation of power.

I think Minnesota’s court should similarly decline to act. It should tell the Governor and Legislature: “This is not our problem. We interpret the law in light of the specific facts of the case. Failure to agree on a budget is not a case for us because there is no law in dispute, no facts to decide. This is a political problem which, under state and federal law, is uniquely your problem. Get to it.”

But hey, I’m just a schmuck from Como Park. What do I know? That’s what experts are for. Somebody get Larry Jacobs on the phone.

Joe Doakes

And rest assured – someone will.  Him and Dave Shultz.

As we’ve been showing this past week on this blog, Governor Dayton has been using poor Minnesotans as an anvil on which to try to hammer the GOP, intentionally ratcheting up the pain to them of a possible government shutdown.

It’s part of a great liberal liberal tradition; individuals can, and if need be must, be sacrified to “the greater good” (which, to modern progressives, means “liberals retaining power”).

Perhaps you’ve heard – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been busted running a “sting” that only stung Americans.

Operation Gunwalker – aka “Fast and Furious” –  has unravelled, with allegations that at very best, it was an incompetently-run operation which allowed thousands of guns to go, untraceably but with tacit, undercover government blessing, to Mexico.  Guns involved in Gunwalker are alleged to have been involved in the death of at least one Border Patrol agent.

And that’s the best that can be said about it.  Because…

The most damning revelations coming out of the hearings on Operation Fast and Furious held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are the unmistakable indications that the program was never designed to succeed as a law enforcement operation at all.

The fact that failed as law-enforcement is bad enough.  It gets worse:

A quartet of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents and supervisors turned into whistleblowers to bring the operation down, but only after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in the Arizona desert. Two of the weapons recovered at the scene of Terry’s murder were traced to the operation.

Bear in mind that every single weapon was bought by a known “straw buyer” under surveillance from the ATF; every single weapon was brought to, and across the border, where it vanished from ATF surveillance.

No, really:

ATF agents testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee could not explain how the operation was supposed to succeed when their surveillance efforts stopped at the border and interdiction was never an option.

ATF Agent John Dodson, testifying in front of the committee, said that in his entire law enforcement career, he had “never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk.” He continued: “I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.”

Note that the entire gun rights movement – the NRA, the GOA, GOCRA, every single one of us – favors keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

But why would the government do this?  Emphasis added:

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border.

Success was measured not by the number of criminals being incarcerated, but by the number of weapons transiting the border and the violence those weapons caused…At the same time in 2009 that federal law enforcement agencies (the ATF, the DOJ, and presumably Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security) were creating the operation that led to the executive branch being the largest gun smuggler in the Southwest, the president’s team was crafting the rhetoric to sell the crisis they were creating.

On television, in various news outlets, and even in a joint appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama pushed the 90 percent lie, implying that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexican cartel violence came from U.S. gun shops.

Like Dayton here in Minnesota, Obama and his administration cynically created a crisis to advance their “progressive” political goals.

It’s the stuff of conspiracy theories – except the evidence is right there, in the words from the ATF whistle blowers.

Unlike Dayton (so far), Obama’s perfidy has claimed the life of a US public servant.

This is worse than Iran-Contra, which never killed any Americans.   Indeed, if the allegations are true, it may be the worst abuse of government power I can remember – because with its complete lack of law-enforcement value, it is intended solely to infringe on the human rights of millions of law-abiding Americans, by way of killing hundreds of Mexicans and one unwitting US cop.

If it were a Republican plan, it would be front-page news.

Progressivism will kill you – literally – if it needs to to meet its goals.

Clarence Clemons died on Saturday, of complications from a stroke.

It’s impossible to overstate how important Clemons was to Springsteen’s early mystique – and Bruce knew it; on a stage full of scrawny white guys (and, during David Sanscious’ two years on keyboards, one scrawny black guy), Clemons was a 250 pound former lineman; he’d played at Maryland State, and gotten signed by the Cleveland Browns before an injury from a car accident sidelined him.

Clemons' annual photo at U of Maryland

He spent a few years working as a social worker, moonlighting as a musician until his fabled meeting with Springsteen, almost forty years ago.

Springsteen’s early sound, heavily R ‘n B-based, leaned heavily on the sax; from the slinky uptown meandering of “Spirit In The Night” to Van Morrison-y raveup in “Blinded By The Light”, Clemons’ sound defined the first two albums, Greetings From Asbury Park and The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.    As the band grew on Born to Run, Roy Bittan’s piano joined Clemons as the keystone of the band’s sound; Clemons became less a background instrument and more a soloist.  His solo  from Jungleland – a long, jazzy intermezzo between the thundering bridge (driven by Danny Federici’s Hammond B-3) and the exhausted-sounding “dawn” scene, taped here in 2009 – was one of his greatest:

Clemons was not a virtuoso musician, in the sense that Nils Lofgren or Roy Bittan were; he was compared to King Curtis, and with good reason, but mostly as an inspired imitator, rarely more inspired than on “She’s The One” (here from one of the greatest treasures of Springsteeniana on the web, the gloriously complete video record of the band’s two-night stand at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey on the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour):

But he was a performer above all; for forty years, he was Springsteen’s foil, the Abbott to Bruce’s Costello.

Scooter and the Big Man, 1985

Few people explain Clemons better than David Remnick at the New Yorker, whose obit is here. Money quote:

Clemons, who died Saturday of complications from a stroke, was not an entirely original player—he was a vessel of many great soul, gospel, and R&B players who came before him—but he was an entirely sublime band member, an absolutely essential, and soulful, ingredient in both the sound of Springsteen and the spirit of the group. Clemons will be irreplaceable; Sonny Rollins could step in for him and never be able to provide the same sense of personality and camaraderie. His horn gave the band its sound of highway loneliness, its magnificent heart. And his huge presence on stage was an anchor for Springsteen, especially when Bruce was younger, scrawny, and so feral, so unleashed, that you thought that he could fall down dead in a pool of sweat at any moment. At the brink of exhaustion and collapse, Springsteen could always lean on his enormous and reliable friend—an emblematic image that is the cover of “Born to Run.”

On the band’s most recent tour, one that celebrated forty years of music-making, Clemons was clearly hurting: bad knees, bad hips, long shows. Backstage he was ferried around in a golf cart; onstage he played a lot of cowbell and, like Pavarotti in his later years, gave his aching joints breaks when he could. But he was still capable of playing, note for note, his signature solos.

He made a joyful noise. Musicians as various as Jackson Browne and Lady Gaga called on him to record, to lend them some of the largeness and warmth of his tone.

Later in the obit, Remnick refers to the band’s performance of Thunder Road, from the Capitol show, as the classic Clemons performance – the measure of Clemons’ vitality to the greatest band in American rock and roll history, the circa-1978 E Street Band.

Here it is – the sax part kicks in around 5:30, as Bruce is pulling outta here to win…:

In the first draft of this post, I left it right there. But I found this the other day – one of my favorite E Street Band moments, one of my favorite songs from that period of Springsteen’s, after megastardom and before his new, purposeful post-9/11 voice of “the Rising”, a song and a performance that captures, like Thunder Road, the essense of the band – but a different essence, and in some ways a different band, both of them with Clarence Clemons as their respective soul:

It’s everything the E Street Band at its best really meant; the pure joy of the purest strain of American rock and roll, straining to get out, finally overwhelming out.

And now, the E Street Band is busted in half.

The Mission:

Step 1: Induce a government shutdown specifically to cause pain among those dependent on government.

Step 2:  Get a compliant media to fix blame on the legislature;

Sylvia Hernandez Cruz holds her 5-year-old daughter on her lap and practices letters, as she sits on a couch in the small rambler she rents on the edge of Moorhead.

Cruz says she’s trying to plan for a possible state government shutdown. She’s trying to stock up on basic grocery items, and making sure her son’s asthma prescription is filled before the end of the month. She’s not sure if she will be able to afford those things next month.

“I’m pretty much making it month to month. That’s the situation I’m in,” said Cruz.

Cruz is among the thousands of Minnesotans who receive food assistance and medical assistance. She’s most worried about medical costs. She doesn’t know where she would come up with the $200 a month to pay for her son’s asthma medication.

Cruz says she’s e-mailed her local legislator, Republican Rep. Morrie Lanning. But she feels helpless following the budget standoff in the news.

…notwithstanding that the legislature submitted a balanced budget, and Governor Dayton’s latest attempt is a solid billion dollars off.

Step 3: Lather, rinse, repeat until the DFL tells them to stop.

I like this…

…because it also works for Mark Dayton’s various attempts at budgets.

…by the latest round of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” ads, the “state workers” castigating the legislature for the shutdown (being planned by and for Governor Dayton’s political benefit).

Are road crews actually going to go out and remove all the guard rails from the highways before the shutdown happens?

That seems just a little…bitchy?  I mean, we paid for ’em once, right?

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.  Today, we’ll be live at RightOnline!

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(Title courtesy Mick and Joe)

Andrew Breitbart caught in avalanche of douchebag effluvia:

And I’d be amazed if a majority of leftybloggers don’t consider this “reporting”.

To think I coulda spent a couple days covering these yapping little juveniles. (Assuming they would give press credentials to an unbeliever).

I had a conversation last night with an acquaintance in the healthcare industry – someone who works in finance for a Twin Cities healthcare provider, and who has been attending “a ton of meetings” lately with officials from the State of Minnesota about the upcoming shutdown.  My source wants to remain anonymous for reasons that’ll be obvious to anyone who knows the Minnesota bureaucracy.

The memo I and several other conservative bloggers ran earlier this week is fairly common knowledge among upper management in regional healthcare; it’s fairly well known that the Administration’s goal is to create, as the memo said, “angst” which will impel people to pressure their legislators to demand passage of Governor Dayton’s budget.

“[The government healthcare administrators and bureaurcrats]  understand what we’re supposed to be doing; we’re supposed to be parading sick children and dying people, getting folks whipped up”, my souce observed.   “[The state wants]  to create pandemonium out there; they want to cut everything cut to the bone; saying that starting July 1, create the impression that nothing (in terms of state payments) will get paid for”.

He added “One of my lefty friends, who hasn’t really been involved in all the legislative stuff, said “the Governor can’t do that…” I don’t think he’d gotten the message!”

But my source related that his source went on to say “I gotta talk to people in the department (Health and Human Services); there’s all sort federal laws; this is crazy!”  In other words, not everyone in the regional healthcare industry believes Dayton’s move to defund health and human services for political leverage is legal at all.  My source notes that while different states handle Medicare payments in different ways, Minnesota splits its payments 50/50 with the Feds.   “If the State of Minnesota took its money up front, there’s no way Dayton can [unilaterally withhold the payments].

“One of our lawyers in DC said the same thing – the Governor can’t do that!”

Beyond the legalities, my source says we should take all “impact” numbers from the administration with big block of salt.

“I [was talking with] the to unions today – we  have no plans to shut down.  But I had to give admin a number of employees affected; all us finance people had to do this. We don’t knowwhat to do – I suspect we’ll see people talking about a big number of layoffs; it’s all bullshit”.  He noted, as an example, that the shut down could affect up to [a very large number of full time equivalent employees] at his clinic. ” I suspect [the administration] will list these as people who will be laid off by the cuts, but it’s just not true…we’re staying open during the shutdown.  If we do, we’ll recoup 95% of the money eventually; if we shut down, we’ll never see any of it”.  But he adds “Every clinic I personally know is going to stay open – we figure we’ll get paid eventually”.

He works at a larger clinic, of course; smaller ones, he allows, will likely face some serious cash flow problems; “they don’t know what to do now”.

The county governments seem, according to my source, to be joining in the stonewalling.  “”I was telling [my source’s county government] to get lawyered up.  we better have lawsuits going on July 1.  I copied county on seeing outside counsel; I was politely told to back off.  Powers that be are going to hype this.  Liberals in [my source’s] County want to strike fear into peoples’ hearts”.   The goal, said a highly-placed source to my own source, is to ” peel off a couple of moderate Republicans” to get them to support the Governor’s all-tax-hike budget.

The most frustrating part, according to my source? “Trying to get some traction”.  He’s frustrated; “why isn’t the media covering this?”

We’re all asking that.

My oldest was born almost 20 years ago.  I’ve had a few Father’s Days.  Of course, I have a father – a great one, as it happens.  I’m a lucky guy.

As Bob Collins notes over at News Cut, not everyone – fathers or kids – is so lucky:

I think being a father is way harder than anything else in the world, but all I take away from that is a new appreciation for my father, who passed away some years ago, shortly after I wrote him a letter telling him so (I’m still waiting for my letter, kids).

The survey presented some interesting data, but shied away from the deeper questions about the role of fathers. If 1 in 10 fathers lived apart from the family in 1960, and now it’s 1 in 4, is that a failure of fatherhood? Is that why fathers think it was easier to be a father way back when?

It’s certainly a part of it.

Margaret Meade once wrote that “Motherhood is a biological necessity, and fatherhood is a social accident”.  And for the past couple of decades, society has been putting its money where Mead’s mouth was.  I couple of years ago, I wrote about my own ambivalence about Father’s Day:

24 million Americans are growing up without fathers. Some of it is due to cultural shifts; big swathes of our society are being born into “fatherless” families; “Urban” culture in this country exalts skipping out on ones’ kids; it sounds tragic, and it is, but it’s a natural offshoot of the devaluation of men, and fathers, left over from slavery and the matriarchal nature of most African societies (which was, in return, reinforced by the rootlessness and destruction of families under slavery). Marriage is an otion rather than the expectation for many in our society – in some quarters, most of our society.

Madison Avenue doesn’t help. The standard archetype of the father in American advertising is the bumbling, inept,. schlubby oaf who’s lucky to be saved by his gorgeous, competent wife (and children – usually girls, of course, since the boys are going to grow up to be fathers one day, too – right?). And if the schlub and Mrs. Fix-It break up? The nation’s family courts systematically undercut the rights and value of fathers in divorce and custody settlements nationwide.

So while raising kids is probably no harder now than it was then, I think it’s fair to say that legally, culturally and socially being a father is a lot more fraught than it used to be.

Anyway – here’s hoping everyone has a fantastic Father’s Day this year.  Beer, baseball and brats for the house!

“I’m shocked, shocked that we have no solution…”, says Governor Dayton…

Minnesota’s budget talks are at an impasse and two weeks before a potential state government shutdown, Gov. Mark Dayton said he does not know how the problem can be resolved.

…to the shutdown he and his cronies have been planning all along.

The only real solution is to find some terrorists to phone in a threat to Saint Paul.

Bob Collins – MPR’s de facto aviation reporter – on the destruction of Liberty Belle, a World War II-era B17G which suffered an engine fire after takeoff from a Chicago-area airport over the weekend.

According to the pilot’s statement, they made a textbook emergency landing after the engine lit up…:

Directly below the B-17 was a farmer’s field and the decision was made to land immediately. Approximately 1 minute and 40 seconds from the radio report of the fire, the B-17 was down safely on the field. Within that 1:40 time frame, the crew shutdown and feathered the number 2 engine, activated the engine’s fire suppression system, lowered the landing gear and performed an on-speed landing. Bringing the B-17 to a quick stop, the crew and passengers quickly and safely exited the aircraft. Overhead in the T-6, Cullen professionally coordinated and directed the firefighting equipment which was dispatched by Aurora Tower to the landing location.

…but the almost-70-year-old plane was completely destroyed anyway:

you will see from photos taken by our crew that our Liberty Belle was undamaged by the forced landing and at the time of landing, the wing fire damage was relatively small. The crew actually unloaded bags, then had the horrible task of watching the aircraft slowly burn while waiting for the fire trucks to arrive. There were high hopes that the fire would be extinguished quickly and the damage would be repairable. Those hopes were diminished as the fire trucks deemed the field too soft to cross due to the area’s recent rainfall. So while standing by our burning B-17 and watching the fire trucks parked at the field’s edge, they sadly watched the wing fire spread to the aircraft’s fuel cells and of course, you all have seen the end result. There is no doubt that had the fire equipment been able to reach our aircraft, the fire would have been quickly extinguished and our Liberty Belle would have been repaired to continue her worthwhile mission.

They don’t make ’em like that anymore…

…is taking some time to find the real exhibitionists.

At its very, very best, watching the Twin Cities mainstream media covering inter-party politics between the DFL and MNGOP is a zen-like experience; you hope, in the best of all possible worlds, for some rudimentary balance.

To wit: Bob Von Sternberg over at The DFL Casserole The Strib’s “Hot Dish Politics” blog tips his hand as re his editorial sympathies, just a tad (with emphasis added):

Members of a legislative budget commission met for the fourth time Wednesday, for the first time moving past their shopworn soundbites as they picked through the details of Gov. Mark Dayton’s just-released plan to shut down state government if a budget deal isn’t reached by July 1.

Hm.  Wonder if any of Dayton spokesbot Bob Hume’s “soundbites” – which, on Twitter, read exactly like a chron job executing a Perl script – qualify as “shopworn soundbites” to Mr. Von Sternberg?

And in something of a role reversal, Republicans — whose budget-balancing strategy relies entirely on spending cuts…

Nope.  No bias there.

On the other hand:

…accused the Democratic governor of proposing the shuttering of government services that will deprive Minnesotans of essential services. They cited his plans to shut off the flow of aid to public schools and halt payments to health and human services providers.

“Whose budget is more draconian,” demanded Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, using the word Dayton has often employed to describe the GOP’s spending cuts [albeit not, apparently, a “shopworn soundbite” – Ed.]; she called his shutdown plan “complete hypocracy. [sic – Ed.]”

On the one hand, it’s the first coverage I’ve seen in the regional mainstream media of the accusations that Dayton has been staging the shutdown, and seeking to amp up the “pain”, at all.  That’s good.

On the other hand, I have this strong sense that it’ll be the only coverage the Strib spends on it – tucked safely away in a blog that only wonks read.

After the commission meeting House Minority Leader Paul Thissen returned Dean’s fire. “I am stunned about the Republicans’ concern about the delay in the delivery of certain government services as a result of the shutdown, but have shown absolutely no concern about permanently and devastatingly cutting those same services,” he said. The GOP’s health and human services cuts “are what I would call breathtaking,” Thissen said,

Note to Rep. Thissen; then perhaps you and your party should have advanced a budget of your own…

Republicans also used the hearing to resume their drumbeat of criticism [Let me guess – a “shopworn” drumbeat? – Ed.] of Dayton’s negotiating style, complaining that he has remained aloof from the process.

“We had a meeting a week ago, I guess, and the governor didn’t attend that,” said Rep. Keith Downey, R-Edina. “I’m just curious in the last week, the last couple days, do you have any information you can provide to us[about] how many meetings the governor has actually been in on the shutdown versus how many meetings the governor has been in on the detailed grunt work of negotiating a budget agreement versus how many meetings the governor has been in on the Vikings stadium?

“That might be telling to us [to show] where the governor’s priorities are, based on where he’s spending his time.”

Yes.  It does, doesn’t it?