Gary Gross’ advice to the GOP.

Don’t forget the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Summer Party – Saturday, August 20 at Keegans Irish Pub in Northeast Minneapols.  RSVP  by sending an  email to “feedbackinthedark”, which is a yahoo dot com email address.

The lefties were all atwitter yesterday over a poll in the MinnPost that purported to show that Minnesotans blame the Minnesota GOP for the shutdown:

By a whopping 2-1 margin, Minnesotans blame the Republicans who control both houses of the Legislature for the recent government shutdown more than they blame Gov. Mark Dayton, according to a poll taken this week for MinnPost.

 

Predictably, most Republicans blamed Dayton more (by 56 to 10 percent, with the rest saying both sides were to blame or holding no opinion). DFLers blamed the Republicans by an even more overwhelming majority (68 percent to just 2 percent of DFLers who blamed DFLer Dayton).

 

But the key swing group of self-identified independents was also much more likely to blame Republicans than to blame Dayton. Among independents, 46 percent “blamed” the Republicans, 18 percent blamed Dayton and 25 percent both.

Hm. That sounds bad!

It also sounded familiar – indeed, it sounded right in line with a prediction I made in this space mere weeks ago.  Go ahead and read it; Prediction 1 was a month late, and it appeared in the MinnPost rather than the Strib; the piece is written by Erik Black and Doug Grow, former Strib staffers, so the feeling of deja vu was so overwhelming…

…that when I first read this post, I practically predicted the bit that is emphasized in the quote below:

Based on other questions in the poll, it was difficult to say whether the fallout from the shutdown will give DFLers a significant advantage heading into the 2012 elections, as Republicans seek to retain their majorities. Projecting current attitudes onto an election 16 months in the future would be folly.

 

Also, this poll, conducted for MinnPost by Daves & Associates Research, was designed to take the pulse of the state in the aftermath of the shutdown, not to predict the next election. No likely voter screen was used and sample surely includes non-voters.

And there you have it.  The MinnPost gets its polling from “Daves and Associates”.  That’d be Rob Daves – the guy who ran the Minnesota Poll for 21 years – the poll whose election-eve polls on Gubernatorial, Senate and Presidential races *always* showed the GOP doing worse – usually much worse – than it ended up doing.

And if it’s a post on politics in Minnesota by Strib alums Black and Grow, who else just has to show up?

Humphrey Center Political Scientist Larry Jacobs said the results of the new poll were “basically bad news for the Republicans.”

 

“They have to think about this fact,” said Jacobs.”The principles that they ran on in 2010 — that they would advocate for cuts only and would refuse to go along with any tax increase — may still be the principles that appeal to the most enthusiastic base of support they have. But that position seems to be pretty unpopular not only with two-thirds of Minnesotans, but with half of their own party, all of whom prefer a mix of significant spending cuts and at least some tax increases.”

Yep, Dr. Jacobs, whose Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Poll is even worse, and whose methodology was openly and publicly savaged by Frank Newman of Gallup last year after the Humphrey Institute polls were not only grossly wrong (predicting a 12 point Dayton blowout in the gubernatorial race which ended up about a .4% race) but were shown to have systematically oversampled strongly DFL areas of the state.

Both Daves’ and Jacobs’ polls, as I showed last year, shared an interesting trait: if the final result of an election ended up being really close, like the ’08 Senate and ’10 Governor’s race (as opposed to blowouts, like the ’06 Senate race), the Minnesota and HHH Polls *both* shorted Republicans *even more*:

The reason? Well, it’s a known fact that voters are prone to the “Bandwagon Effect”; they do tend to go along with what polls tell them, positively or negatively.  My theory – while it’s conceivable that the Strib, Rob Daves, the Minnpost, the HHH Institute and Larry Jacobs are unaware of the “bandwagon effect”,  I’d be a lot more convinced if Daves didn’t have a 24 year record of shorting the GOP on controversial, loaded polls when the chips were down (and Jacobs’ polls even worse for seven years).

The poll canvassed less than 600 random adults – not registered, much less likely, voters – and, as usual, it heavily-sampled identified DFLers and unspecified “independents”.

It was July 29, 1991.  It was exactly 11:30 AM.

And after a four year drought, I had a shot at getting back into the game.

After Joe Hanson sicced me on a lead for an “executive producer” at KSTP, I had had a phone interview with KSTP-AM’s general manager, Ginny Morris, the previous Monday.  I can’t honestly remember much about it…

…but it must have gone well, since she’d arranged a second interview immediately. We’d meet for a lunch interview.

Which was today – at 11:30AM.

We met at “Keys”, a cafe in the Midway.  Morris – one of the scions of the Hubbard clan, a granddaughter of Stanley Hubbard, the founder of KSTP, one of the great pioneers in broadcast history and one of the founders of radio as we know it today – arrived.  We traded some small talk as we took a small table along the side wall.    Or ordered a club sandwich; having never had a lunch interview before, I had actually gone to the library and researched what was and was not a good idea for eating at interviews.

The first half the interview was mostly your standard interview questions – “what’s your biggest weakness?”,that sort of thing.

And then, the second half?  “What would you do if you were the executive producer?”

I hadn’t expected that.

But after listening to what they’d done with KSTP-AM – my station – the previous four years, I’d certainly thought about it.

I remembered what Bob Richardson had taught me at KEYJ ten years earlier.  “I’d make sure everyone on the air did the station ID whenevever they open or close the mike”.  Radio station ratings back then were rated by people who kept diaries of their listening.  They’d track stations by one of four things that the people who analyzed the book could recognize; the call letters, the frequency, the motto and the air talent name.  “So every time they turn the mike on or off, it’d be “…this is KSTP, AM1500, the Talk Station, I’m Barbara Carlson.  Every time”.

She took notes.

“Oh, and Barbara Carlson?” I started, speaking of the station’s morning host, a legendary Minneapolis socialite and ex-wife of the sitting governor, Arne Carlson.  Her show was kind of a melange of her larger-than-life, “brassy” personality on the one hand, and all sorts of political insider stuff on the other.  “Pick one”, I said, “and incorporate the other side into it, so the show has a coherent identity. Be either a serious, sober political insider with a fun side, or be Barbara Carlson, with some politics”

We carried on like this for a good half an hour.  I had plenty of ideas.

Finally, she had to get back to the office  We shook hands.  The body language seemed…good?

I couldn’t really tell by that point in my life.  Nothing had worked out well for quite a while.

———–

I was getting better at body language.  She called me later in the day  I was on the short list; she wanted a third interview, with her and the station’s consultant.   Next week.

The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Summer Party is coming up very, very soon.

Annoucement tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network – 1-3PM on AM1280 The Patriot.

…or, truth be told, allow myself, I have to say that sometimes it’s enticing to think it’s very, very justified.

(SCENE: Denise CARDINAL, head of Alliance for a Better Minnesota chair of the Minnesota DFL, wallks into her office, sits in an overstuffed chair)

(KEN MARTIN walks in to room).

MARTIN: “Hello…”

(MARTIN stops abruptly as CARDINAL motions downward with her index fingers.  MARTIN sighs, gets on hands and knees in front of CARDINAL’s char.  CARDINAL puts feet up on MARTIN’s back).

(REP. JOHN LESCH, who is minding the phones, buzzes in) “Mizz Cardinal, the party from the legislature is here to see you”.

CARDINAL: “Send them in please”.

(Tom BAKK, Paul THISSEN and Ryan WINKLER walk in.  Each bows deeply toward CARDINAL).

CARDINAL: Rise!

(All three take seats in overstuffed chairs around the room).

CARDINAL: OK.  What do we have?

BAKK: We think we have a plan!

THISSEN: Yes!  A plan!

WINKLER:  Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Let me hear it!

(THISSEN motions to WINKLER)

WINKLER:  Well, there’s this group, the “American Legislative Exchange Council“, or “ALEC”.  They are your run of the mill conservative activist group, run by Grover Norquist…

(BAKK, THISSEN and CARDINAL hiss theatrically)

WINKLER: …and they propose legislation and stuff, and lots of Republicans legislators have signed up with the group…

BAKK:  And if we can spin them as some big, shadowy conspiracy that tells affiliated legislators do to Grover Norquist’s bidding…

THISSEN:  Yeah! Grover Norquist!

WINKLER: Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Silence!  I like it! Winkler?

(WINKLER bows deeply)

CARDINAL: Start telling people that ALEC is a powerful, unaccountable group that wields boundless resources to pull the strings at the Minnesota State Legislature…

LESCH (Buzzes in) Mizz Cardinal?

CARDINAL (enraged) WHAT?

LESCH:  The Gentlemen are here.

CARDINAL:  Thank you. Send them in.

(CARDINAL makes a hand gesture to BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER, all of whom get up from their chairs and lie, face-down, on the floor, head-to-foot, from the door to CARDINAL’s chair)

(CARDINAL rises as Tom DOOHER enters the room in a long, black cape.  He is accompanied by Javier MORILLO, who is wearing a long purple cape.  DOOHER steps across WINKLER, THISSEN and BAKK’s backs to walk to CARDINAL, to whom he offers his hand.  CARDINAL kisses his pinky ring).

DOOHER:  Well?

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey.

MORILLO:  You heard the man! SOUND OFF!

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey!

DOOHER: Very well.  Stand up, for Minnesota’s students.  (As BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER stand, DOOHER takes BAKK’s seat.  BAKK takes THISSEN’s, THISSEN takes WINKLER’s, who stands awkwardly).

DOOHER: Let us talk of the 2012 session…

(And SCENE).

It’s no secret – American trade unions have been hemorrhaging membership for decades.  Outside government, there really is very little future for unions; in the private sector, they are a cost that generally can not be sustained.

And so when the unions can find a hidden trove of tens of thousands of workers that can be unionized in one fell swoop, it’s like candy at Christmas.

The proposed merger between ATT and TMobile will release just such a stockpile of fresh potential dues-paying recruits.  ATT is unionized; TMobile is not, but being the absorbed entity, its employees – 20,000 of them – would be potential union recruits.

That’s a lot of money.

And the unions knew it.  And so the unions – almost all the big ones – aggressively lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve the merger.  The record is long and ornate; the unions really, really wanted this deal.

Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO., sounded off when the news of the proposed merger broke:  “Yesterday’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T hasimportant, positive implications for consumers in the U.S. and Germany, forthe U.S. telecom workforce and for our country’s economic future. The acquisition ensures AT&T a strong telecom workforce well-positioned tocompete globally, while offering tens of thousands of T-Mobile USA employees the opportunity to make their jobs good jobs by benefitting from the pro-worker policies of AT&T, one of the only unionized U.S. wireless companies”

The AFL-CIO’s house blog was similarly effusive: ““The announcement over the weekend that AT&T is buying T-Mobile USA could benefit both consumers and employees”

And Larry Cohen, President, Communications Workers of America. also spoke up: “For more than a decade, the United States has continued to drop behind nearly every other developed economy on broadband speed and build out. The Federal Communications Commission sounded the alarm more than a year ago with its broadband report, and President Obama in his State of th eUnion address called for increased efforts to bring the U.S. back to global parity as a key stimulus for economic development. Today’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T is  avictory for broadband proponents in both the U.S. and Germany. For the U.S.,it means that T-Mobile customers will get quick access to the AT&T network,soon to include LTE or data speeds of at least 10 megabits down stream.More important, as part of the deal, AT&T is committing to build out to nearly every part of the U.S. within six years”    Bear in mind that Cohen and the CWA are not cheerleaders for big telecoms; they’ve fought a long, losing battle with Sprint over their practice of contracting out labor, rather than hiring expensive union employees and taking on their pension burden.

Last month, Philip Qualy, legislative director of the Minnesota United Transportation Union’s mailed the FCC’s Julius Genachowski to support the merger; you can read the letter here.  Ditto Shar Knutson and Steve Hunter, from the MN AFL-CIO.  And Julie Schnell, President of the SEIU’s Minnesota State Council; while the SEIU is reliably in bed with the Democrats and the DFL, they know money when they see it.

And Edward Reynoso, political director of the Teamsters’ “Democratic Republican Independent Voter Education” (DRIVE) project, who estimated the long-term upside for the unions, and the private economy, at up to 96,000 jobs.  Not to mention Mona Meyer, president of the Minnesota Communications Workers of America, the union that’d be most affected by the merger.

There is no doubt that labor has close ties with Democrats in Congress.  A list of eighty members of the House of Representatives – including Betty McCollum, of Minnesota’s Fourth Congressional District, signed a letter to the FCC also supporting the merger.

So it’s a big deal for the unions.

And as such, it should be a big deal for Democrat – right?

———-

Last Wednesday, Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl recommended that the FCC spike the almost-$40-billion deal:

”I have concluded that this acquisition, if permitted to proceed, would likely cause substantial harm to competition and consumers, would be contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest, and therefore should be blocked by your agencies,” Kohl said [last] Wednesday.

The unions seemed flabbergasted.  Candice Johnson, communications director for the Communications Workers of America, wrote to tell the FCC that no, they were not amused:

CWA Response to Kohl Letter 7 20

So what does this mean for Al Franken, for  you private sector union people out there,and for the country?

More tomorrow.

Why don’t you ever put liberals on your show?  We do.  Ed and I have interviewed Erik Black, Dane Smith, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, and my old friend, Erik “The Transit Geek” Hare.  All of them but Rybak at least once (and we may extend another invite to Hizzoner).

Beyond that?  I have standing invtations out to…:

1. Senator Amy Klobuchar (although finding an actual media contact at her office is always a challenge))
2. Senate candidate Al Franken
3. Rep. Keith Ellison
4. Rep. Betty McCollum (who, let’s be honest, doesn’t make even a token effort to be press-friendly)

While Ed and I are overt, partisan conservatives, we’ll put the level of civility and respect in our interviews up against anything you hear on MPR (and better than NPR; we’re honest about our biases – hello, Nina! – and neither Ed nor I has ever wished a death by AIDS on anyone).

And of course, our producer Tommy has standing orders to jump liberal callers to the front of the caller queue when we’re taking calls, which is pretty much always.  All you have to be is on-topic, or off-topic in a way we’re interested in discussing.

What about Michele Bachmann?  Do you think she’ll be the nominee?  Her surge in the early – let me say again, early – running is pretty impressive,  It shows that the Tea Party has gone from demonstrating to voting.  That’s a good thing.  So does Michele and her organization pack the gear to go all the way to the nomination?  I have no idea.  That’s why the nomination season is so fun to watch.  Who’s gonna end up on top?  More later…

No, I don’t mean why don’t you put liberal pols and wonks on the air.  I mean why don’t you put liberal bloggers on the air to debate with you?  Well, if there’s one that has something to say, that is something that’d interest and entertain our audience – which, remember, is national as well as regional – go ahead and pitch Ed and I.   We’re open to just about anything, provided we think it’d be good radio.

And by “good radio”, I mean entertaining and informative.  The sad fact is that general, “throw out a topic and let’s go at it” debates are really dodgy as radio entertainment.  Still, even abstruse ideological whizzing matches are kinda spotty when it comes to being entertaining radio – wonks love ’em, audiences usually don’t, although to be fair the Patriot’s audience, especially the Northern Alliance’s, is much more receptive than most – but anything’s possible, which is why I say “throw us a pitch”.  There’s not much in radio I haven’t done (other than “get rich); I’m game – but it can’t suck.

How can you say the shutdown was a victory for the GOP?  The Republican borrowed money!  Yeah, that particular DFL chanting point is a funny one.  First – no conservative is happy about the “borrowing”.  But we’re borrowing from ourselves.  Not China.  Not our children’s future.

Second – you do know Dayton’s “education shift” was going to be a lot bigger than the GOP’s.  You do know that.  Right?

No, Merg, I mean why don’t you let me, a “progressive” blogger with a history of bellowing, browbeating and namecalling, into your studio, so you can’t turn me off?  Hm.  Intrigueing offer.

I mean, I kinda spelled it out above.  If you have a subject that’s topical, interesting and potentially entertaining, we can talk.

If, on the other hand, you’re one of those leftybloggers who’s good for about one round of factual discussion – say, until your chanting points from Media Matters and “Crooks and Liars” and Mike Malloy get debunked – and you turn straight to the browbeating and the name-calling?  Well, the only real entertainment value would be in the whole “mocking your intellectual impotence” thing, and we don’t need you in the studio to do that.

And since you, not I, said that I “couldn’t shut you off”, that kinda implies the fun would end there.  Because yes, I certainly could!  It’s called a microphone switch, and I control it!  One of the key rules of hosting a talk show is “stay in control”.  Callers and guests don’t control the show – the host does!  So if a guest (hypothetically) veers from “entertaining” to “not entertaining” for whatever reason?  It’s done!  We move on!  And while it’s a fuzzy gray line between “mockery” and “not entertaining any more”, rest assured we’ll know it when we see it.

So stick with “pitching us a story”.  You might learn something.

We really did.

“Socializing 1/7 of the economy”, we tried to tell the other 52-odd-% of you,”will screw up the economy even worse than it already is”.

And we were right:

Private-sector job creation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading to predictions last year of a “Recovery Summer.” Since April 2010, however, net private-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerable uncertainty about the future. To encourage hiring, Congress should repeal Obamacare.

Some of us are trying.  We really are.

What if Minnesota’s unions gave their all to support a DFL senate candidate – and he stood them up when it was time for their key bit of swag?

Yesterday, it got a column in the WaPo.

In the Tech section, in a piece by Cecilia Kang.  Al Franken filed a brief with the FCC opposing the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Tuesday urged regulators to stop AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile, saying the $39 billion deal would drive up prices for consumers and threaten jobs.

We’ll come back to that last sentence in just a moment here.

In a filing sent to the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission, Franken said the deal would lead to a market duopoly and that conditions attached to the merger wouldn’t stop what could be as much as a 25 percent increase in wireless costs for consumers.

“The competitive effects of a merger of this size and scope will reverberate throughout the telecommunications sector for decades to come and will affect consumer prices, customer service, innovation, competition in handsets, and the quality and quantity of network coverage,” said Franken, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ”These threats are too large and too irrevocable to be prevented or alleviated by conditions.”

Now, in a sense, this isn’t a surprise.  The far left, the “Nutroots”, hate this merger.  Behind the banner of “Net Neutrality”, they’d much prefer the government to control the world’s bandwidth.

Franken’s move comes after committee chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis. wrote a letter to federal officials last week, saying such a merger would violate antitrust law.

But we’re not here to debate Net Neutrality.  We’re here to talk Al Franken.

Franken has two main bases of support in Minnesota, which pushed him – a political neophyte, albeit a pundit with portfolio – over the top in the 2008 Senate race against Norm Coleman; the Netroots – the mass of far-left “alternative” media activists – and the unions.

And on this issue as few others, those two bases are very much in conflict.

And if you’re a union worker, you need to know what Franken did.

More at noon today.

For starters, there’s only one thing in the media lower-rent than posting titillating headlines to draw search engine traffic.

And that is anything said, thought or done by Cenk Uyghur.

Uyghur who just got whacked at MSNBC after a not-especially-auspicious year or so – claimed that he was diced because he was just too tough on politicians, and that his Youtube channel is bigger than Jebus.

Which drew the attention of Breitbart, who is to bloaty-headed lefty wannabe thugs what garlic is to bloaty-headed wanna be thug vampires::

Nothing lower than exploiting public prurience for ratings and search engine traffic.

And in closing, may I just add “Scarlett Johannson Sex Tape”.

That is all.

Boehner’s response to the President’s communal scolding was short and to the point.

Still, this one would have worked just fine:

(Via Brad “The Closer” Carlson)

Obama’s support is crumbing – among Tea Partiers Liberals:

The Post-ABC poll found that the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent. The number of African Americans who believe the president’s actions have helped the economy has dropped from 77 percent in October to just over half of those surveyed.

As longtime friend of this blog Duke Powell tweeted this morning:

Forget who the GOP Presidential Candidate will be…. Who will the Democrats run? #p2 #stribpol

I’d love to see Pelosi run…

UPDATE: Let’s be clear here; I think Obama is going to be hard to beat in 2012. Lots can go right, as well as wrong, between now and then.  Let’s never forget that incumbency counts for a lot.  Indeed, if Obama doesn’t win re-election by at least five points, and if the Dems don’t retake the House and extend their lead by five seats in the Senate, they should take it as another grievous drubbing.

Just saying – he can’t be happy with the news.

It’s become a Democrat cliché; any move to touch any government spending will “destroy” the program in question, inevitably starving the elderly and freezing the children, or something.

Lost in much of the barbering and protesting over GOP public-spending reforms – DC, Wisconsin, Minnesota and everywhere else – is that without conservative reform, the programs the lefty is yapping about will collapse under their own weight; it’s only through significant reform that the programs will be sustainable at all.

We’re seeing that in Wisconsin already:

Emily Koczela had been anxiously waiting for months for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill to take effect. Koczela, the finance director for the Brown Deer school district, had been negotiating with the local union, trying to get it to accept concessions in order to make up for a $1 million budget shortfall. But the union wouldn’t budge.

“We laid off 27 [teachers] as a precautionary measure,” Koczela told me. “They were crying. Some of these people are my friends.”

And what happened?

On June 29 at 12:01 a.m., Koczela could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The budget repair bill​—​delayed for months by protests, runaway state senators, and a legal challenge that made its way to the state’s supreme court​—​was law. The 27 teachers on the chopping block were spared.

It was the reforms – the ones that were going to “destroy” education – that saved the teachers.

Not the unions and their screeching about Madison last winter.

With “collective bargaining rights” limited to wages, Koczela was able to change the teachers’ benefits package to fill the budget gap. Requiring teachers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salary toward pensions saved $600,000. Changes to their health care plan​—​such as a $10 office visit co-pay (up from nothing)​—​saved $200,000. Upping the workload from five classes, a study hall, and two prep periods to six classes and two prep periods saved another $200,000. The budget was balanced.

I wonder how many of those 27 teachers called in sick to go to Madison last winter?

Looking back through my archives, I think this piece from last December – when Dayton “won” the recount – was pretty dead-on.

I’ve only run into Linda Berglin a few times.  The long-time Legislative insider – nine years in the House, thirty more in the Senate – always seemed to me, an admittedly jaundiced observer, to be one of those legislators that sprouted roots in the Capitol.

Or, more accurately, sprouted roots in the majority caucus at the Capitol – where the power is.

Like Ellen Anderson last spring, Berglin has apparently tried life in the minority, and found it wanting.

State Sen. Linda Berglin announced Monday that she will leave the Legislature on Aug. 15, in the wake of her new job with Hennepin County.

The piece – from Rachel Stassen-Berger at the Strib’s Hot Dish blog – lets out one “moo” for which there is just not enough cow:

Berglin has served in the Legislature since 1972 and is one of the Capitol experts on the state’s health and human services system. She had a hand in shaping the system that created one of the healthiest states in the nation. For decades she has been respected and feared by both sides of the aisle and in the health care industry.

People like Rachel Stassen-Berger keep saying that like it’s a good thing.

Berglin was truly the mother of the Minnesota Department of Health and Human Services as we have known it for the past thirty years; a place with bounding, skyrocketing spending, the place that has truly given baseline-budgeting a bad name and turned it into Target Number One for the GOP’s reform movement this past session. HHS’ increases have always been in the double-digits, biennium over biennium, while Berglin was one of its key legislative benefactors.

And since Stassen-Berger chose to phrase her piece the way she did, I have to ask; did the bureaucracy that Berglin helped build “create” Minnesota as a healthy state, as opposed to Minnesota’s fairly healthy ethnic majority (Minnesota and the low-tax, low-“service”, Berglin-free Dakotas perennially vie for healthiest states in the union) and better-than-average standard of living?

Correlation does not equal causation.

Well, it’s all water under the bridge now.  Like her fellow legislative Ozymandias, Anderson, Berglin has decided the view from the basement – and being out of absolute power – doesn’t become her:

Since the last election, she was marginalized as Democrats lost the Minnesota Senate for the first time since she joined the Legislature…Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk said Republicans and Dayton administration officials were discussing the final health and human services legislative proposal.

“The governor’s office called and said ‘[Senate Majority Leader] Amy Koch wants you out of the room,'” Bakk said. “Linda doesn’t know why. But she’s incredibly knowledgeable.”

And, more germanely, she was part of the DFL’s no-ideas, all-stalling approach to the “negotiations”.  She had no place in the discussion, because she was there to add absolutely nothing.

Still and all, with all that “incredible knowledge”, Hennepin County residents should be immortal soon.

Bon voyage, Sen. Berglin.

UPDATE:  A legislative insider messaged me: “It’s no coincidence that this was the first time in 30 years Berglin wasn’t involved in HHS negotiations and there was reform.”

Throuigh the simple expedient of remembering why they were went there, and staying with it against a full-court media press, the House GOP majority has prevailed on Harry Reid to cave on the budget.

…now that Harry Reid is developing a proposal with $2.7 trillion in cuts and nothing in revenues, it’s a safe bet that it won’t include any tax increases. Which means that whether Republicans realize it or not, they’ve won. The question now is whether they can stop.

Originally, the Democratic position was that we should simply raise the debt ceiling. Republicans said “no.” There would have to be a deal that reduced the deficit by at least $2.4 trillion — which is the size of the debt ceiling increase needed to get us into 2013.

Then the Democratic position was that we should raise the debt ceiling through a deal that reduced the deficit by about $2.4 trillion, with $2 trillion of that coming from spending cuts and $400 billion coming from taxes. Republicans said “no.” There would have to be a deal that disavowed taxes.

Sound familiar to Minnesotans?

If you’re a conservative, neither the Minnesota budget nor the various GOP proposals in Congress are perfect.   Neither can be; both faced Democrat chief executives, and in Congress a Democrat-controlled Senate.  Let’s be honest; the GOP at the federal level is doing its darnedest to shake off a decade-old habit of going along to get along with the establishment and its craving for spending.   Viewed through a conservative purist’s lens, it’s not good enough; viewed from the perspective of a GOP that, six years ago, was spending money like an Orange County sweet-sixteen with dadders’ platinum card, it’s well-nigh miraculous.

Ditto the Minnesota GOP.  Again – the MN budget deal isn’t perfect, and the MNGOP admits it.  They had to compromise to get past the Governor.  But the job in Minnesota isn’t just getting a budget passed; it’s reversing five decades of “government first” inertia among the state’s governing class, against a DFL phalanx of lavishly-funded special interests who would leave no mound of slime unturned to protect the status quo.

The GOP went to DC and Saint Paul with a clear mandate; don’t be that GOP, the one that played ball with the DFL on a wink and a backslap from 1969 through 1998, the one that went inside-the-beltway native after 1994.

There’s a lot of work to be done.  But it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you remember your mission.

Matt McNeill – a “host” of sorts at failed local liberal-talk station AM950, on Twitter Sunday morning:

Disturbing the righto’s/tea baggers who condemn the Norway shooting in 1 breath, then share the shooters frustration at liberals in the next

For some reason – no coffee yet? – I responded:

It’s official: @MattMcNeilAM950 thinks questioning American liberalsm = sympathy w/Breivik. This is the liberal media. #stribpol #narn

Which prompted McNeill’s to respond:

It’s official, #mitchpberg understands and sympathizes with the Norway shooter. To Mitchy, killing 100 people is just a 1st Amendment issue.

This is the “mind” of the Twin Cities leftymedia in action.

It’d be tempting to call for some sort of response – but it occurs to me that “working” on AM950 is punishment enough, in almost a Biblical sense, for that kind of bigotry.

Lately, there’s been a flurry of lefties claiming that today’s GOP wouldn’t vote for Ronald Reagan because “he was too moderate”.

Is it true?

I said it was lefties, didn’t I?  Of course not.

Last week, we dispensed with the idea that “Reagan raised taxes“, showing it was both a gross oversimplification and a complete lie.

Another point that the lefties will make is that Reagan signed the bill legalizing abortion in California.

Now, it’s a fact that I don’t follow pro-life issues as closely as some do.  I remember Reagan using his bully pulpit to attack abortion, but I don’t remember the details. I’m pro-life, to be sure, but it’s not my most important issue. I leave that beat to others.

Two of those others are Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, whose National Review piece three years ago adds the context the leftybloggers weren’t told by their superiors to include don’t:

[Honest] discussions of Reagan’s record on the abortion issue admit that as California governor he signed into law a liberalization of abortion that led to an explosion of abortions in the nation’s largest state. Reagan critics and supporters alike recognize this fact — one that is particularly tough to swallow for staunch pro-lifers. The full story, however, is more complicated — and worth setting straight now, 35 years after Roe v. Wade.

As with all “Reagan was a moderate!” memes, the story the lefties give you is a grain of truth amid a wad of inconvenient, omitted context, in other words.

June 14, 1967, Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, after only six months as California governor…How did this happen?

When the issue surfaced in the first months of his governorship, Reagan was unsure how to react. Surprising as it may seem today, in 1967 abortion was not the great public issue that it is today. Reagan later admitted that abortion had been “a subject I’d never given much thought to.” Moreover, his aides were divided on the question.

Reagan began to vigorously study the issue and the Therapeutic Abortion Act. He asked his longtime adviser and Cabinet secretary Bill Clark — a devout Catholic who had contemplated the priesthood — for counsel. “Bill, I’ve got to know more — theologically, philosophically, medically,” Reagan confided. Clark loaded up the governor with a box of reading materials, which he took home and read in semi-seclusion. Edmund Morris later said that, by the time the Therapeutic Abortion Act reached his desk, “Reagan was quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas.” Years later, Reagan remarked that he did “more studying and soul searching” on the issue than any other as governor.

Nonetheless, he signed the bill. Reagan and his staff calculated that if he vetoed the bill, his veto would be overridden by the state legislature. Therefore, he decided to do what he could to make the bill less harmful, arguing for the insertion of certain language that eliminated its worst features and allowed for abortion only in rare cases — such as rape or incest, or where pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother.

In other words, Reagan seized the second-worst outcome available to him; he negotiated to try to make the bill less onerous.

And the results?  Today they’d call it a “teaching moment”:

The Therapeutic Abortion Act became law. And as would happen with nearly every abortion law in the years ahead, the mental-health provision was abused by patient and doctor alike….Reagan was shocked at the unintended consequences of his action. Morris said Reagan was left with an “undefinable sense of guilt” after watching abortions skyrocket. Cannon claims this was “the only time as governor or president that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation.” Clark called the incident “perhaps Reagan’s greatest disappointment in public life.”

And Reagan learned from the mistake and the  – spending the rest of his political career as one of the voices of the pro-life movement.

As we noted on the “Reagan Raised Taxes” issue, it’s not that Reagan was a moderate; it’s that he made the mistake of trusting Democrats on the tax issue, and ignoring the very real  political and social motivations behind the infanticide movement.

We all know better than that.

Your lefty friends, cow-orkers and neighbors likely do not.  So set them straight.

The Minnesota Free Market Institute’s “Friedman’s Birthday Party” celebration is coming up Friday, July 29 at the Marriott West in St. Louis Park.

Here are the details.  Hope to see you there!

Fearless Prediction: the chorus of lefties who are now chanting that Anders Behring Breivik is “conservative” – to try to equate the accused mass-murderer with Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann, naturally – will be chastened to learn that he was more “anti-Muslim” than actually political – and that “right-wing” means something very different in the context of European racial and religious politics than it does here…

…oh, who am I kidding?  Left wingers are never chastened for making overwrought, bigoted statements about American conservatives.

(See: Jared Loughner, Bill Sparkman, Larry Piderman, John Patrick Bedell, Maurice Schwenkler, the Tea Party “racist chants”…)

It’s only a prediction.

Merely wanting peace doesn’t give you peace.

At least 80 people died when a gunman opened fire at an island youth camp in Norway, hours after a bomb attack on the capital, Oslo, police say.

Oslo police are questioning a 32-year-old Norwegian man in connection with both attacks.

The man was arrested on tiny Utoeya island outside Oslo, where police say he opened fire on teenagers.

Earlier, the number of dead from the Utoeya shooting spree, which is among the world’s most deadly, was put at 10.

The earlier bomb attack killed at least seven people. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose Oslo offices were among those badly hit by the blast, described the attacks as “bloody and cowardly”.

The shooter apparently impersonated a cop:

Hours after bomb blasts shattered the holiday calm of downtown Oslo, a man arrived at Utoya island, 50 kilometres from the Norwegian capital, by ferry.

He was wearing a police uniform and packing several weapons, including at least one submachine gun and possibly a rifle.

The stranger beckoned to some of the 550 young people attending a summer camp organized by the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party.

“Come here,” he said, claiming he was performing a routine security check after a bomb blast hours earlier in downtown Oslo killed at least seven people and injured many others.

Once a sizeable group had gathered, the man — who looked like a typical Norwegian, with blond hair and spoke with an eastern Norwegian accent — said this was just the beginning and opened fire.

The campers, aged 15 to 25, scattered in panic, many throwing themselves in the water in an attempt to escape the island, which had no bridge to the mainland. Others cowered in nearby buildings.

A 16-year-old named Emma said she thought at first it was just somebody fooling around, but after she saw two people shot dead she realized it was serious.

“Me and my boyfriend Erik, we ran to the sea and we hid ourselves in [a cave]. After a while … we heard the gunshots right from above us and we could actually smell the — what’s it called? — the gunpowder and we were so scared so we just waited till he went away,” she told the BBC.

Early indications – and they are very early indeed – are that the killer was a lone madman, not connected with any international terror organizations.  The politics, if any, are unknown.

Ever since Barack Obama launched onto the national scene, the media has been doing its level best to try to paint all disagreement with Obama as “racism”.  As if we conservatives and Republicans would have voted for a Fabian-socialist ward-heeler, had his last name been Tostengaard.

The meme is spread partly to try to fluster conservatives, to make us waste our time defending ourselves against scabrous slander instead of explaining why cutting taxes raises revenue.

But it’s just as important as a means of creating a paraoid, “us vs. them” mindset on the left; to convince them that they are just plain better than their opposition.  It’s a key part of any scorched-earth rhetorical war; one must caricature and dehumanize ones’ opponents.  Republicans didn’t just vote against socialism; they voted against a black guy.

And so the meme spread a few years ago among the entire leftyblogosphere chain of command, from Media Matters on down to MinnBlue or whatever it is today, that death threats against the President were running four times what they ran under George W. Bush.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The lie that won’t die – but will be used to shame blameless White Americans in St. Paul.

August 2009, CNN reports: Threats against President Obama have increased 400% since he took office.

December 3 2009, Politico reports: Secret Service says no, they haven’t.

December 4, 2009, RenewAmerica.com reports: CNN retracts 400% claim

BUT . . .

July, 2011, [St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist] Rubin Rosario reports: “ . . . threats against Obama rose more than 400 percent from the 3,000 a year logged under his predecessor . . . . ”

Insert joke about “fact-checkers” and “gate-keepers” here.