I hereby announce the formation of a budget resolution commission.  We shall present recommendations to Governor Dayton and the Legislature to help resolve the budget crisis.

I’d like to note that this commission is better than bi-partisan – it’s tri-partisan!   Beyond that, it actually contains a majority of DFLers.

It includes representatives from the world of alt-media, academia, and politics.

From politics:

• Phil Krinkie, former Republican legislator and current head of the Taxpayers League.
• Vin Weber, former GOP 2nd District US Congressman.
• Randy Kelly, former DFL mayor of Saint Paul.
• Norm Coleman, former DFL mayor of Saint Paul.

From academia,

• King Banaian, former Libertarian Party member, noted economist.
• David Strom, former MNSCU instructor, former liberal Democrat.

From the Alternative Media:

• John Hinderaker, blogger for Powerline, former liberal, and noted lawyer.
• Jeff Rosenberg – liberal blogger from some blog or another.

This commision should be immune from criticism on the grounds of being “extremist conservative”; as noted, most of the members are liberals!

And the commission has issued its report a day ahead of the Carlson/Mondale commission!  The report calls for…:

1. A $27 Billion budget that trims spending back to pre-recession levels.
2. Abolition of several state bureaucracies – the Departments of Education, Development and Economic Development, Human Rights, Housing Finance, Iron Range Resources and Development, the Met Council and the Metro Sports Facilities Commission will be abolished forthwith.  Also, the Sunset Bill (HF2 in the previous legislature) will be adopted in toto, but with all time-times cut in half.
3. Immediate State Hiring Freeze – the state has plenty of workers.
4. Working toward privatizing public schools by 2015.
5. Immediate radical cuts in business taxes, including an immediate two week sales tax holiday and a Business Tax Lottery granting one lucky Minnesota business a complete one-quarter exemption from business income taxes every month.

These recommendations – which, we hasted to remind you, were developed by a commission made up mostly of liberals – are of such obvious common sense that we recommend Governor Dayton adopt them immediately, in the interest of bipartisanship.

Because we’re bipartisan!

The New York Times opts to toss facts under the bus in yesterday’s editorial about the Minnesota Shutdown:

How far will Republican lawmakers go to protect millionaires? Those who think a default on the federal government’s credit seems implausible should take a sobering look at the “closed” signs dotting Minnesota. The Republican Party there readily shut down the state’s government on Friday by refusing to raise taxes on the 7,700 Minnesotans who make more than $1 million a year.

Well, no.

The GOP refused to raise taxes.  Period.  Dayton chose to make it about “millionaires”, and before that “the rich”.  Had Dayton chosen to raise, say, the gas tax (like the DFL majority in 2009 did), a terribly regressive tax that squats all over working-class prosperity, the GOP would have opposed that, as well.

For the Times to turn the GOP’s opposition to a tax into “protecting millionaires” is a craven bit of rhetorical dishonesty.

Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, campaigned for office last year promising to raise taxes on high earners, so it was no surprise when he proposed a tax increase on families making more than $150,000 a year to help close a $5 billion budget gap. In negotiations with the Republican majority in the Legislature, he compromised and reduced the increase to those making $1 million or more, but Republicans are refusing to consider any income tax increase.

Note the rhetoric: Dayton keeping a campaign promise?  Good.  The GOP? Can’t be good, can it?

Like Republicans in Washington, they have the delusion that they can balance the budget entirely from cuts.

The Times’ “editorial” was apparently written by the MNDFL’s chair, Ken Martin.  The GOP budget is the biggest spending increase in Minnesota history.

The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care and public safety programs.

All of which the GOP compromised on, meeting Dayton much more than halfway.

The Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1.

The Times apparently believes the GOP should “negotiate” like a Saturn dealer; start with their “final offer” and work backward from there.

Also unmentioned by “the Times” editorial writer: Dayton walked out of the negotiations every time.  The GOP Legislature was waiting in the Capitol, ready to negotiate and/or pass a “lights on” bill, to keep govermment running

More than 40 state agencies have closed, including the state parks over the July Fourth holiday. Courts and public safety agencies are operating, but essential services for the poor, like food pantries and child care subsidies, have evaporated. Many parents say they may have to quit their jobs if state-subsidized child care does not resume quickly. The shutdown will cost the state money, since many of the 22,000 laid-off workers will receive unemployment benefits and health insurance, while the treasury is unable to collect on tax audits, lottery tickets and park fees.

Unmentioned by the Times (or any of the Twin Cities media); the evidence is overwhelming that Governor Dayton rigged the shutdown to cause as much pain as possible, specifically to drive those dependent on state employment or services to try to push moderate Republicans into wobbling.

As painful as the closure may become, the governor is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington and across the country.

“Extremist ideology”.

The GOP ran very openly on a platform of holding the line on taxes and spending.  Perhaps you remember the Tea Party – it was in all the papers, including the Times.

Extremist?  Governor Dayton won with 43% of the vote; the GOP majorities had, by definition, over 50% of the state’s voters pick them (since the third-party challenges were virtually nonexistant in legislative races in 2010).  Can a policy chosen by over half the voters be “extemist?”

The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Day at the Range will be held on Thursday, July 14, at Burnsville Pistol Range in Burnsville.  The event will run from 5-8PM.

The event will be a benefit for the family of the late Joel Rosenberg.  The suggested donation to participate is $20 – and since every penny of proceeds will go to the Rosenbergs, anything extra is appreciated.

We’ll have five or six firing lanes.  Bring your own handguns; if you don’t own any, there will be quite a few loaners there from various MOB members.

The ammo supply is, in that great Minnesota tradition, pot luck; feel free to bring a box of ammo out to use on pieces that you want to borrow; you can certainly barter and share ammo when you get there if you want to try more than one piece.  You may also buy ammunition at Burnsville, which sells most of the popular calibers of pistol ammo.   Indeed, we recommend buying ammo at BPR – they are giving us a spectacular rate on the bay.

We have loaners committed in the following calibers:

• .22 Long Rifle
• .38 Special
• .357 Magnum
• 9mm Parabellum/Luger
• .40 S&W
• .45 ACP
• .45 Long Colt (revolver)

Please respond in the comment section, or by emailing me at “feedbackinthedark”, which is a Yahoo dot com address.  Please provide…:

• Your name
• Any extra people in your party
• Whether you will or will not be bringing a piece.
• Whether you’d be willing to share the piece(s) with other particpants.

Hope to see you there!

Here’s the Googlemap for Burnsville Pistol Range.

I just finished watching former governor – as in, “not the governor anymore” – Arne Carlson on Channel 11’s morning show.  The former – as in, “hasn’t been elected in 17 years” – governor was promoting his “independent” budget commission.

I didn’t hear much; I was too busy yelling at the TV.  Having that smug, sanctimonous fop back on the TV still makes my wallet hurt.

But I do recall that his little spiel was clogged with references to “the way we used to do things in Minnesota”; code for “parties working together”.  As in “cooperation among elected officials, with no “extremists” hijacking the process to their ends”.

So what do we have here in Minnesota?

A legislative branch whose overwhelming majority agrees on a budget is being held up…

…by the Governor.

Is that the sort of “cooperation” that Carlson is talking about?

Or are his scruples purely partisan?

After spending millions of dollars upsetting the DFL machine, and then more on the campaign of toxic sleaze that put him in office by a whisker, it seems Mark Dayton really doesn’t want to do his job all that badly.

After rejecting a balanced Republican budget that not only lives within state revenue but also gave him most of his purported policy goals, Dayton first called for a “mediator”.

In other words, he called for a single lawyer to dictate what the state budget would be.

And now, he’s brought in a junta – a group of “experts” – to dictate what the budget should be.

Former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and former Vice President Walter Mondale have assembled a six-member panel of experts to help resolve the state’s budget standoff, the two announced Tuesday.

The group “features” Arne “High Times” Carlson – whose only budgetary experience came during the prosperous, cha-cha nineties – and Walter Mondale, who was Jimmy Carter’s vice-president.

These two – the RINO and the hard-line DFLer – are joined by a dog’s breakfast of “experts”.

Any guess on what the “experts” have in common?

Two former legislators are on the panel — Republican Steve Dille and DFLer Wayne Simoneau.

Dille got a 55 from the Taxpayers League.  Simoneau was a DFLer – need I say more? –

It has two representatives of the business community — former Norwest Bank president Jim Campbell and Medtronic vice president Kris Johnson.

That’s Jim Campbell, whose recent political donations have been to DFLers, potemkin Republican Chuck Hagel, and a few Republicans back in the day when the parties were basically different shades of spendthrift, and Kristen Johnson, whose record seems to be Republican, which donations to McCain-Palin, Erik Paulsen and other Republicans.

The other two members are former state finance commissioners — John Gunyou, who served in the Carlson administration, and Jay Kiedrowski, who worked for DFLer Rudy Perpich.

That’s John Gunyou, who ran as Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s running mate in the primaries against Dayton last year – for the DFL nomination – “managed” budgets at a time when budgeting was a piece of cake since the good times were rolling, and has been beating the drums against conservative governance ever since he left office.

Speaking in Minneapolis’ City Hall, Carlson said he thought legislators and Gov. Mark Dayton needed the help.

“When the process loses the ability to be flexible to effect compromise, then you have to have an outside party,” said Carlson. “In business it might be some sort of mediation or arbitration, whatever it may be, but you need that kind of process to take place.”

Carlson said he’d like the panel to offer a settlement of some kind by the end of this week.

Let’s see – with six high-profile liberals (Mondale, Carlson, Gunyou, Kiedrowski, Schowalter and Campbell) and one apparently conservative (Johnson), what do you suppose that “settlement” is going to look like?

Like a “back to the Nineties” – a perfect accompaniment for Dayton’s “back to the Seventies” administration.

Mondale said he also worried that the fiscal debate in Washington could add fuel Minnesota’s budget crisis.

“I’m afraid that if we don’t reassert Minnesota’s ability to think and create in this crisis, that we’ll be overwhelmed by national pressures,” said Mondale.

Dear Carlson, Mondale et al:  we elected people to do our “creating” and “thinking”; a bare plurality got behind Dayton, while a clear majority put the GOP legislature in office.

You want to play governor again?  Get yourselves elected.

Go away.

“There once was a Congressman named Wiener,
Who possessed a perverted demeanor.
He got kicked off the Hill
For acting like Bill,
Now D.C. is one wiener leaner.”

— forwarded by Joey Gerdin

Someday, when “Drinking Liberally” becomes more of a food thing and less of a booze gig, I think I’ve got their venue:

.

Broadway at Bass Lake in Crystal.

Just saying.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Governor Dayton wants another $2 billion, supposedly paid for by the richest 2%.

Nonsense, never happen.

The rich are rich, they’re not stupid. They won’t voluntarily hand over an extra $2 billion – they’ll hire tax lawyers and CPAs to hide their money. Worst case, the rich will move out of state and take their businesses with them.

How many of those rich people live within easy driving distance of Wisconsin, with its tax-cutting administration?

So if the Governor gets his way there won’t be any extra tax revenue but we already will have spent the money. How will we pay for it?

If the rich won’t pay, and the poor can’t pay, who will pay? You know who.

That’s been the fact all along; since taxes on “the rich” never generate what the politicians think they will, but spending always meets projections, the taxes will inevitably filter down to the middle class.

Doakes:

There are 5 million people in Minnesota. There are about 2 million tax returns filed but nearly half of them pay no tax at all (they only file to get a refund) and of the rest, a bunch are “married filing jointly” in which there basically is one earner. There are probably 1 million actual middle-class taxpayers in Minnesota.

$2 billion is 2,000 million. That’s two thousand dollars per taxpayer. Your taxes will go up $2,000 per year, call it $160 per month or $40 per week. A dollar an hour more taxes.

Mark Dayton shut down the entire state government, holding everyone hostage, for a dollar-an-hour pay cut.

But let’s be honest; if Dayton gets his way, this is just the beginning.  The auto-pilot increases will continue; it’ll be another six billion dollar “deficit” in 2013; the “rich” will have been tapped out (or left); there’s another buck or two or three an hour.

What’s that you say, it’s not a pay cut? Hey, if your paycheck is smaller by a dollar-an-hour, does it matter whether your boss cut your pay or the government took more taxes? Either way, you’re skipping one tankful of gas, skipping one restaurant meal with your family, skipping one grocery shopping trip, skipping $40 every week for the rest of your life.

Maybe the Governor truly believes we’ll be happy to pay for a better Minnesota. Maybe he thinks his union buddies are clamoring for a pay cut. “Me! Me! Pick me! I want my taxes raised. I want less money in my pocket. Raise my taxes, please!” Personally, I have not heard one single Minnesotan demanding to pay more in taxes out of their own pockets. Raise taxes on other people – sure; but not on me. It’s easy to spend other people’s money. But when it’s your own? Not so much.

But that, of course, has been behind the DFL’s house of political cards for the past forty years – forcing other people to pay for your goodies.

The Governor is holding hostage every citizen in this state, until we accept a dollar-an-hour pay cut.

A dollar-an-hour pay cut.

On top of the cut Obama’s going to give you.

How many of you are “happy to pay?”

Any bets on what they’ll talk about at this one?

Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson have called a news conference to discuss the state government’s shutdown.

Mondale is a Democrat who represented Minnesota as a U.S. senator in the 1960s and `70s. Carlson is a Republican who served as governor in the 1990s.

No, I don’t think there’s any action on that bet.

Whenever the regional establishment (read: left-leaning) media wants to try to delegitimize the MNGOP in the eyes the vast majority of people who don’t pay much attention to politics, they wheel out Arne Carlson.  Carlson, who governed Minnesota from 1990 to 1998, was a Republican, and that’s usually where the media accounts stop, omitting that he governed like a moderate Democrat; indeed, James Lileks used to joke that while he was in DC, he described the Carlson/Perpich race (1990) as “the pro-abortion, pro-gun-control candidate versus the Democrat”.

The MinnPost  continues the media’s curious habit of genuflecting to Carlson.

Gov. Arne Carlson had one of those “hey-wait-just-a-minute” moments Thursday while reading a MinnPost article.

On the surface, the article, about government reform, seemed complimentary of Carlson, who was governor from 1991 to 1998.

Rep. Keith Downey, a leader of the reform movement in the Republican-controlled Legislature, was talking about how way back in the Carlson era a report had been issued calling for structural reforms to help government move from budget to budget more smoothly.

“We’ve been putting off reforms for 15 years,” Downey said. “The time to act is now.”

That’s the line that upset Carlson.

“Who’s this Downey fellow?” he asked me.

“Me”, in this case, is Doug Grow, who along with Lori Sturdevant has been building the gauzy, soft-focus myths about the glory days of DFL/”GOP” cooperation.

And if Carlson doesn’t know Keith Downey, then who the hell cares what he thinks?

A representative from Edina starting his second term, the governor was told.

“If he’s starting his second term, he’s probably part of the problem,” Carlson said.

Can you imagine if Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Amy Koch had said something that so fluently mixed arrogance and ignorance?

Carlson contends that his administration didn’t just point out the long-term structural problems in the 1995 report that Downey was referring to. Rather, it made the “reforms” necessary to correct the problems.

Let’s talk about the truth about Carlson’s administration.

He had revenue surpluses most years during his administration.

You know – surpluses.  Years where revenues exceeded expenditures.  Given that Minnesota’s state revenues are so closely tied to economic performance, through income and sales taxes, a surplus is generally an indicator of a good year.

And most of the years in the nineties were good years.  Indeed, from 1990 to 1998 it was ar pretty cha-cha time in Minnesota; after a brief downtown early in the decade as the ’92 recession worked out and the local economy readjusted to plummeting post-Cold-War defense spending, the economy pretty much boomed the whole last 2/3 of Carlson’s reign.

And Carlson took those temporary surpluses into permanent entitlement spending. The budget more than doubled under Carlson’s regime – spending that was paid for by temporary windfalls during good times.

In other words, Arne Carlson is the problem we currently face in this state; he was the godfather of the autopilot spending increases that feed the all-consuming, ever-escalating  hunger for tax revenue that currently hobble our state’s budget process.

Arne Carlson – shut up and enjoy your retirement.  You are not just irrelevant and in the way; you are not just a Potemkin Republican that estabishment backslappers like Lori Sturdevant and Doug Grow trot out to beat over the MNGOP’s head.

You are the problem.

Minnesota politicans – DFLers all – have blessed the rest of us with three quotes that sum up the difference between conservative and “progressive” politics – and, indeed, the evil of progressivism – more concisely and starkly than all of the Poli Sci PhDs in the world have done through all of history.

Back in 2007, it was Saint Paul DFL Senator Cy Thao, who said “When you guys win, you get to keep your money.  When we win, we take your money!”.

In 2009?  Larry Pogemiller, who said “I think it’s silly to assume people can spend their own money better than government can”.

Both of these statements can be read as “politicians slipping up and telling the truth”; they’r funny, as far as that goes.

But both statements also point out what is so profoundly wrong with “progressive” politics; it exists by not only sponging off the labor of others, but by trying to convince them that being sponged is in and of itself noble.

And now we have a third.  Last Sunday, on the Esme Murphy show, Elliot Seid  – the capo for the Twin Cities Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said “We don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem!”.

In other words, everything that everyone earns in this state should be suject to being appropriated, until government’s appetites are met. Maybe exceeded just a bit, just to be sure.

The quote has an inside shot of winning this year’s Charles Townsend award.

And it, along with Thao and Pogemiller’s quotes, should be printed up on T-shirts by the GOP and handed out at the fair this summer.

Graeme Zielinski is a former “journalist” who, at least, finally cut the crap and went to work for the Wisconsin Democrat Party.  And here was his Tweet from last Friday:

Go for it, Graeme.

We’ve been talking about this for seven years.

The time has come.

The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers “Day At The Range” will be held…in the very near future.

Here’s the deal:

• We’ll be renting a bay of lanes – probably 5-6 stations on a firing line – at a local gun range.  We’ll have ’em rented for four hours.
• The event will be on a weeknight – because ranges are much cheaper to rent on weeknights.    This is important because of the next point.
• It’ll be a benefit – details coming soon.  Admission will likely be in the $20 range, with proceed going to the benefit.

Now, here’s where MOBsters come in; we need a couple of numbers

• How many people can make it to a gun range in, let’s say, the south suburbs, on a weeknight – say, Wednesday or Thursday.
• How many people can bring some sort of firearm (OK, handgun)
• How many would be willing to share with people who don’t have their own, or who want to try out otoher firearms?  (You’ll be on your own for the arrangements for ammo; I’d suggest pro-rating your ammo cost per magazine, or 5-6 shots for revolvers, and taking “suggested donations”.

We don’t have a firm date right now, but we will very shortly.

So – if you fit any or all of the categories above, please either leave a comment, or (if you prefer privacy) drop me a line at “feedbackinthedark”, which is a yahoo dot com address.

This will be happening in the very near future.

The Minnesota Legislative GOP, in the waning hours last Thursday before the shutdown, introduced a “lights-on” bill – a bill that would provide a couple of weeks of short-term funding to keep state services going to those who need them, and are genuinely dependent on the state.

Governor Dayton dismissed the bill as a “stunt”.

Here’s Governor Dayton, not “stunting”:

At the Alexandra House, a women’s shelter in Blaine that depends on state money, executive director Connie Moore has begun spending the shelter’s savings to keep the doors open. The desperate move won’t buy much time.

“We’re gambling right now,” Moore said. “If we don’t get reimbursed, the impact will be long-lived.”

The GOP’s “stunt” would have kept Alexandra House operating and solvent.

Governor Dayton tossed that aside to protect…AFSCME’s ability to retire at 55 with full taxpayer support?

In St. Paul, Rhonda Nelson, who is deaf and blnd, just lost her eyes and ears to the world. The aide who helps her go grocery shopping, to doctor’s appointments, to the post office and other appointments has been deemed non-essential in the state government shutdown.

For someone who already spends most of her days in dark silence, losing the service is heartbreaking. “I’m basically stuck at home,” said Nelson, 65, a former disabilities educator from St. Paul, speaking through an interpreter.

The GOP’s “stunt” would have kept Ms. Nelson’s eyes and ears, as it were, functioning.

Dayton sacrificed Ms. Nelson’s eyes and ears to…what?  Chastise entrepreneurs.

Programs that help get families out of homeless shelters, allow single parents to stay in the workforce, provide safe havens for battered women and allow those with disabilities to enjoy everyday life have suddenly lost funding and are teetering on the edge of closure.

The GOP’s “stunt” would have fixed that, while the negotiations continued.

Dayton couldn’t have that.

I’ll be on Larry O’Connor’s “Stage Right” show at 11PM Central.

Join the show here.

Every so often, America’s attention is drawn to small groups of men who very sincerely don’t want attention drawn to them.

US Navy SEALs fast-roping onto a carrier

The latest example – and, counterintuitively, one of the most spectacular examples in history – was the May raid by special forces, publicly credited to the Navy SEALS, that killed Osama Bin Laden.   There’ve been other examples; the long patient waiting game in the Arabian Sea last year that led to three simultaneous sniper shots killing three pirates; the rescue of kidnapped British missionaries in Iraq…

Polish GROM commandos. Modeled after the SEALs, GROM became highly-respected in Iraq.

…and, going back a few years, the rescue of passengers from a Lufthansa airliner in Somalia (killing the terrorists, rescuing the passengers), and the rescue of dozens of hostages from the Iranian Embassy in London, after the terrorists had actually started killing hostages.   Other missions – Entebbe, Mogadishu, and even Desert One – are household phrases among people who watch these things.

In every case, the missions were carried out by groups of men that their respective governments denied existed – indeed, actively deceived their publics about; for starters, “SEAL Team Six”, which the media credited with the Bin Laden raid, doesn’t actually exist, and hasn’t in decades (either does “Delta Force”, although the unit it refers to most certainly does).

These weren’t “just” “commandos” – whose debut, seventy years ago earlier this year, we covered – units like the Rangers, the Royal Marine Commandos and other units whose specialty was sneaking up on the enemy and then wreaking untrammeled mayhem.  These were units that combined the determined brawn of the commando and the paratrooper with a subtle precision that was, to those used to the mayhem of an infantry or tank attack, unusual for the military.

It was seventy years ago today that a British infantry captain, David Stirling, founded a small unit of men intended to launch focused, pin-prick but devastating raids deep behind German/Italian lines in Libya – indeed, a unit whose intention was to make “lines” irrelevant.  Some staff officer christened the unit the “Special Air Service”, to throw off German intelligence.  The name stuck.

Col. Stirling and an SAS

The SAS was formed for some of the same reasons as the Commandos – but with a different approach to a mission.  Where the Commandos, and the American “Ranger” units they spun off,  sought to descend on a target by surprise and with overwhelming force and inflict immense mayhem, the SAS was different; working in generally in groups of two to sixteen men, they’d slip in by parachute, or by heavily-modified Jeeps, deep into enemy territory and operate for long periods; sometimes to sabotage enemy airfields and bridges; others, to assassinate enemy officers or collaborationist politicians; others still, to scout targets for bombing raids; other times, to support and create resistance groups among locals deep in enemy territory.

A pair of wartime SAS jeeps. Armed with machine guns intended for air-to-air usage, they were very difficult to aim - but at the range they were used at, aim was superfluous.

The men selected were, above all, tough.  Not “strong”, as such, but men who were wired to go to any length, even death, before accepting failure.   They were trained to a razors edge; experts at stealth, fieldcraft, camouflage, combat demolitions, communications and the blocking and tackling of close-in infantry combat, they were drawn from the hardest men in the British empire; Cockney scouses, New Zealander farmers, highlanders, career soldiers who’d become bored with the lockstep to-and-fro of regular army life.

SAS patrol in Libya

How tough were they?  One patrol of four men, whose jeeps were knocked out, walked 100 miles through the Libyan desert to get to safety – with a two-gallon can of water.

How trained were they?  One man, carrying a truckload of captured Italian mines, heard the sound of a detonator arming itself, and dove instinctively from the truck just before it blew up.

How successful were they?  Hitler himself, after enduring SAS raids in North Africa, the Adriatic and Italy as well as  in France (where SAS patrols linked up with the French Maquis resistance in the Vosges mountains and created a resistance movement that essentially denied the area to the Germans for nearly a year until liberation came), ordered captured SAS men to be turned directly over to the Gestapo, and then executed.

By the end of the war, the SAS comprised five battalions – two of them French, and one of them Belgian.  Both countries’ current special forces units trace their lineage to those units.

French SAS troopers in a village in the Vosges mountains.

As, of course, does the current SAS, the British Army’s premiere special operations unit.

Belgian SAS troopers somewhere in Holland, World War 2

It is, of course, the armchair colonel’s most self-indulgent exercise to speculate who is “the best special forces unit”, especially given that any unit that doesn’t believe that it’s the best is probably not fit to fight.

But it’s worth noting that as we enter the second decade of a War on Terror that has put immense loads on the western world’s Special Forces – the men that can do the seemingly impossible – the number of units that trace their lineage directly back to World War II.

• We noted some time ago the birth of “The Commandos”, and units like them – America’s Airborne Rangers, the British Special Forces Support Regiment, the French Parachute regiments, Australia’s various Commando Regiments.
• The “US Special Forces” – the “green berets” of popular lore, born in the Cold War, honed in Vietnam, and 85 of whom (backed up with the full might of the US Air Force) routed the Taliban in 2002 at the head of the other “Northern Alliance”, were rooted in three units that were formed after Pearl Harbor; the “Office of Strategic Services”, which would parachute three-man teams of operatives into France to link up with resistance groups; the “1st Special Service Force“, a joint US-Canadian commando unit intended to infiltrate enemy territory in Norway and Italy, especially in winter, to destroy tunnels and hydroelectric dams; and the 99th Independent Infantry Battalion, recruited from Norwegian natives and fluent speakers in Minnesota, the Dakotas and Michigan, intended to land in Norway to form a guerrilla movement.  These three units all provided the basis for the “Green Berets” mission today; combat power plus cultural and language skills to carry out ‘Unconventional Warfare” – recruiting resisters – deep in enemy territory.  Other units – the “Alamo Scouts”, small groups of American operators that infiltrated the Philippines by submarine to link up with resistance groups – followed the same model.
• Other units – like “Number 30 Assault Group”, a commando unit with which a young Ian Fleming served as a planner – blurred the line between “commando” and “intelligence operative”; they specifically sought and attacked German and Italian headquarters; adept in lockpicking, burglary, stealth and German as well as close-quarters battle, they sought plans, maps, rosters, communications, encryption equipment and, at the end of the war, data on Germany’s nuclear weapons program – and provided a rich vein of narrative for Fleming to mine in his “James Bond” series.
• Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols as we know them today started with Britain’s “Long Range Desert Group” – groups of 6-8 men in converted Dodge trucks loaded with radios, weapons and, above all, fuel and water, that’d infiltrate German lines in the Western Desert to scout and report back targets for Allied aircraft to destroy.

But the first, and perhaps the most influential, and that one that brought all those threads together, was the SAS.   The unit fought throughout the war, was disbanded in 1945 but reformed in 1947, and has been the west’s leading “black bag” unit ever since.

SAS troopers in Aden - now called Yemen - in the sixties, in the midst of a very hot war.

A young American exchange officer, Charles Beckwith, used his experience with the unit as a template for the unit that became known as “Delta”, which serves the same role for the US Joint Special Operations Command today.

Are they Deltas? Are they even Americans? Nobody's supposed to know. But this is supposedly a sanitized photo of "Delta" operators in Afghanistan.

The British Marines’ equivalent of the SAS, the “Special Boat Service”, which spun off from the SAS during the missions to support Greek and Yugoslav rebels during the war, became (along with the US Navy’s “Frogmen”, close-recon and demolitions experts in their own right) the model for the US Navy SEALs.

And the SAS led the world at learning how to fight terrorists at knife-point range…

SAS troopers assault the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980. Terrorists had begun killing hostages; the SAS pulled off the rescue.

…along with the Israelis, of course, whose elite unit, Sayaret Matkal, which carried out the Entebbe raid, is modeled on the SAS, and with whom it shares its’ motto, “Who Dares Wins”.

Israelis greet commandos returning from rescuing over 100 Israeli hostages from Idi Amin's clutches at Entebbe, Uganda, on July 4, 1976.

It’s the bleeding edge of warfare as it’s practiced today, spinning together the most rarified strands of intelligence and soldiering – and it started seventy years ago today in the Libyan desert.

…last winter?  After Congresswoman Giffords was shot, and the entire American Left was wetting its pants about the most oblique possible references to “violent rhetoric” and “the degredation in tone?”

Ryan Lyk of the Minnesota College Republicans snapped this shot – of someone in a Minnesota Association of Professional Employees T-shirt – at the demonstrations around the Minnesota State Capitol last night.

Ryan Lyk has his account of the evening over at the MNCR’s blog.

A little later, a group of individuals in wheelchairs started yelling at us and telling us that we were “killing” disabled, homeless, and sick people. The police shut them down, but it just got worse from there. A little while later, a man came up to us and said “history will repeat itself and all of your heads will be cut off.”

The unions are pretty classy, aren’t they?

This was really just the tip of the iceberg. We had people poking our eyes with umbrellas, having their 8 year old children trying to cover up our signs, trying to push us and stifle our free speech, flicking us off, cussing at us, antagonizing us, harassing us… the list goes on and on.

What is truly important, though, is that throughout the entire night, we stood strong and stayed above the fray. We never worked to stifle the oppositions free speech, we never threatened them, and we were never disrespectful.

Of course, to plenty on the left, conservatives’ existence is taken as a sign of “disrespect”.  That was certainly the vibe out at the Capitol last night.

As we face a new shutdown – our first in six years – it might be useful to go back in time and look at this account of life, and death, during the’05 shutdown.

From the late, great “Kool Aid Report”, here it is.

I went down to the Capitol last night to see what was going on.

I walked up John Ireland past the State Office Building, and saw people – many if not most of them wearing identical T-shirts from the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees – gathering in knots and clots around the Mall, many carrying pre-printed signs (“Tax the top 2%!” and the like).   It was as clear as it ever is; it takes a lot of money to show what a bunch of working stiffs they are.

I found a group of College Republicans gathered near the top, stage left (to the audience’s right).  They assembled with their handmade signs fairly early in the evening.  One of them – Ryan Lyk, one of their leaders and a long-time Twitter correspondent of mine – related a story; one of the “protesters” had walked up to them just before I arrived, and said (in and among a rambling discourse) that he’d “cut the heads off” the College Republicans.  Then he’d apparently scampered away; they always, always do, I noted.  The CRs reported the “man” to the police, but nothing more came of it.

As I was discussing that incident, I noticed a guy – short, mid-forty-something, in a sleeveless “Everlast” T-shirt – standing in front of the CRs, talking aggressively, ostentatiously taking cell phone calls and talking loudly about “We’re about to start it up with these people”.  Then, he took his cell cam, turned around, and snapped a picture of one of the College Republicans’ women’s butts as she was facing up the stairs.  From very close range.

Let’s get this straight; he walked up behind a teenage girl and snapped a close-up of her ass.

About this time, I flipped on my camera’s video function – catching him just as he checked out his work, slouching down the steps toward the rest of the crowd.   Then he turned and noticed me taping him.  He flipped me two middle fingers.  “Did you get that?”, he gurgled, laughing an addled-sounding laugh.  I kept on taping; he walked up the steps, trying to look intimidating; he got directly in my face put his cell phone maybe two inches from my face, and snapped a cell shot.  He reeked of alcohol.   He walked away, looking like every loudmouth aggressive drunk looks when they’re prancing about the pool tables at the bar, puffed up and aggressive and daring someone to cross ’em, bellowing about the picture he’d taken.

Suffice to say, we reported him to the cops too.

There was another guy – mid-forties, with that “academic” look about him, who wandered up to the CRs and started trying to pick an argument.   He brought up tuition costs – and while I went there intending mostly to be a fly on the wall, photographing and videotaping, I had to join in.  “Why do you think tuition is so high?”

He stared into my camera.

I explained a little basic economics; how if you pour money into the market for a good or service that is in limited supply – like seats at the U – the prices will rise.

He stared some more.

“What do you think about that?”

“Don’t photograph me.  My face is copyrighted”.

I hadn’t heard that one before.  “You’re in a public place…”, I responded.

“Could you please not photograph me?”

And that was the best argument I heard from any of them all night – or, truth be told, from almost any liberal, on any subject, ever.  But I digress.

At any rate – before long, dozens of people in MAPE T-shirts crowded around the dozen or so CRs.

A young woman with a guitar was meandering about the place; while I placed her (correctly) as a “progressive”, she actually spent nearly as much time arguing with the union members who were, by this time, crowding around the CRs, alternately trying to obscure the view of their signs and, occasionally, to heckle them.

Photo courtesy Kate Paul

She actually wanted to know what it was that made people be Republicans.  I gently corrected her – I’m a conservative – but in all my years of being a hate-choked agitator, I can’t say as I’ve ever been asked to explain that, impromptu.  I told her I’d grown up very liberal; that Reagan’s prosperity was huge, and that his ending of the cold war was bigger still, and since I’ve been working in the real world I’ve found absolutely nothing about “progressive” ideology that makes any sense.

The conversation got harder and harder to have – the chanting around us was getting pretty intense.  The T-Shirt Crowd were chanting loudly.  And some of them seemed genuinely offended by the presence of the CRs on the Capitol steps.   One guy – doughy, fiftysomething, with long, stringy, frizzy gray hair in dire need of a comb – kept bellowing “why don’t you all get jobs!”.  I did at one point append “…so you can work ’til you’re 75 so he can retire at 55”.  But I think it got lost in the din.

I had to leave around 10:30.  It was getting dark out, and I had to be up at 5AM.  Laura Gatz from Princess Politics showed up a little later, and snapped this photo of the Capitol lights shutting off:

Photo courtesy Laura Gatz

Which, if you’re not from St. Paul, you should know never happens; the Capitol is always lit.

I’ll upload photos and video when I get some free time here…