Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Last night I saw something I have never seen before and never expected to see: the outdoor refrigerated ice rink at Northdale Rec was full of skaters, while the two adjacent rinks were bare dirt because of above-freezing temperatures this week.

Mayor Coleman was right: the biggest problem facing the City of St. Paul is indeed the soft ice caused by global warming. Spending millions of dollars on outdoor refrigerated ice rinks was, in fact, a prudent investment.

I stand corrected.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Sa-lute!

The DFL and Media (ptir) are focusing heavily on the current “battle” between the MNGOP’s “establishment” – more on that in a bit – and the “Grassroots”.

This pops up most frequently in situations like the 2006 Sixth District caucuses, where the “establishment” got exercised because Michele Bachmann flooded the caucuses with “her” people – which elsewhere in politics is called “getting elected”.

Ditto 2008, when the Ron Paul crowd flooded the caucuses.  The big story was the newbies’ passion and, er, numbers, versus the “establishment”‘s ire at their purported party (in both senses of the term) being crashed.   The Paulbots complained, then and now, about the welcome they got from “the Establishment” – not realizing that had they stuck it out a few more years and put some of their passion into organization and longevity, they just might be the GOP “Establishment” today.

Anyway, whenever things like candidate insurgencies, waves and tempest-in-a-teapot controversies befall a party, there are inevitably calls for “Unity”.

Craig Westover, writing in True North, commented on another excellent TN piece by J Ewing (on which I commented at length on my show over the weekend).

Grassroots activism is absolutely necessary to keep the establishment honest – wherever the line is drawn. To Mr. Ewing’s point, effective grassroots activism eschews the ad hominem attacks and vindictive searches for conspiracies and scandals and focuses on issues of principle, and a wise establishment takes grassroots criticism as the opportunity for some soul-searching reevaluation of their own commitment to the Party’s common vision and objective that starts with winning elections.

That’s the key – and hard – part; having a disagreement and a debate that matters without having the circular firing squad for which the MNGOP is so very famous.  “Disagree without being disagreeable” is the line (all too often coming from people who then go on to be extremely disagreeable, but them’s the breaks).

But unity has it limits:

However, contrary to Mr. Ewing’s conclusion, the relationship between grassroots and establishment remains, and should always remain, tense and somewhat contentious. Good leadership exploits that tension; it doesn’t waste time trying to negate it with pleas for “unity.”

Consider: Lemmings personify the ultimate unity.

That’s the real challenge; the “divide” between the “Grassroots” and the “Establishment” can be a very, very good thing.  You just have to have people, and a party, that’s smart enough to use it.

“Occupy Minnesota” “protesters” disrupt a Henco Commission meeting by…

…well, basically, kicking their feet and sputtering like spoiled four-year-olds.

The footage above is by Bill Sorum at “The Uptake”, the lefty astroturf vidblog.  Sorum writes hilariously:

Since the occupation began on October 7, there have been a number of attempts to remove the protestors from The People’s Plaza ( also known as the Hennepin County Government Plaza).

No, Bill.  It’s known as Hennepin County Government Plaza.  A bunch of spoiled dilettantes are calling it People’s Plaza, but nobody that anyone in Henco voted for made that decision, so…no. It’s not People’s Plaza.

But since y’all are so concerned about First Amendment rights on the plaza, maybe Minnesota Concealed Carry Reform Now should have its next open carry picnic there.  Maybe this Sunday.  Because we’re all about rights, too.

I was talking after the NARN last Saturday with one of our producers.  He’s a younger guy, sharp as all get-out, and – as befits a producer at a conservative talk station  – conservative.

But like a lot of younger conservatives – really, young people of any political affiliation – he hasn’t completely formed his impressions about…

…well, not so much is own principles, but how to analyze those of others.

Like a lot of non-wonks I know, he’s a little unclear on what the fuss is about Mitt Romney; “is he actually a conservative?”, he asked?

According to one big chunk of conservative conventional wisdom, of course, he’s on probation at best.

But I told him “yes” – he is.  The real question is, “what do you mean by “conservative?”  Because “conservatism” means at least three different, highly distinct movements in the US today.  I’ve been writing about this for quite a while; we have…:

• Northeastern Conservatism:  Comfortable with big government, but generally pro-business and anti-government-intervention, at least in re the economy.  Think Romney, Giuliani, Chris Christie, and George H. W. Bush.  Are they conservative?  On fiscal, business and business-regulatory issues, absolutely.  On social issues?  “Not so much”, reply the…
• Southern Conservatives:   The stereotypical southern conservative is a Bible-Belt Crusader on social issues.  Paradoxically, they are frequently much less so on fiscal issues.  I’ve often wondered why that was.  Think Mike Huckabee and, to an extent, George W. Bush. We’ll come back to that later.  Anyway – standing well aside and hectoring them both – these days, from the high ground, in virtual control of the GOP grass roots – are the…
• Western Conservatives:  Libertarian on social issues (at least as re government is concerned) and budget hawks.  They are big on Small Government.  Ron Paul is as far out as the GOP gets in this department; most of us Hayek buffs fit in here.

Some local leftybloggers – and national liberal pundits, for that matter – are tittering that “the Tea Party is dead!”.

But if this Gallup poll is accurate, the Tea Party is now the mainstream:

Americans’ fear of big government – partly fueled by a sharp spike among Democrats since President Barack Obama took office – almost reached a record high this year and is far greater than people’s concerns about big business and big labor, a new Gallup poll Monday shows.

If you’re a Tea Partier, and you’re wondering all that sound and fury signified anything, you can look at this bit here (emphasis added)…:

An overwhelming 64 percent of people surveyed said big government was the biggest threat to the country, compared to just 26 percent who said big business is their gravest concern and 8 percent who picked big labor.

…and think “Mission Accomplished”.

Not that the job is done.

Brian Lambert at the MinnPost h quoted me the other day:

Minnesota’s most prominent conservative bloggers are oddly quiet about the party’s exciting weekend.

Minnesota’s “most prominent” conservative bloggers – Powerline, Ed Morrissey – don’t do much coverage of local politics much less the inner workings of the MNGOP.

Of course, those of us who do cover the state – Gary Gross, True North and the Dogs – certainly did cover the “exciting weekend”; most of them were there at the Doubletree along with me.

But Lambert noticed I’d been writing on the subject:

But at Shot in the Dark, Mitch Berg takes a run at it:

Lambo grabbed a lengthy quote from this piece here.  It ended with this bit:

And yet the GOP — which, for all its faults, is the only actual transparent political party in this state (if only because nobody, but nobody, cares about the Independence Party) — is going to have to get through some of this BS to go forward.”

…and he added…:

… But just “some” of it.

Yep.  Just some.

I said it on the radio over the weekend, and I’ll stand by it; the whole incident is going to be a good thing for the MNGOP, if it tackles the issue head-on.  The party’s in debt:  so tackle the debt.  The party lost its statewide races and two recounts: so figure out what we need to do to fix it.  None of this is brain surgery – politicians do it, for chrissake.

And we’re going to tackle it a year before the election.  Oh, the media will do what they can to keep it current – but by next election time, the GOP will be out of the metaphorical woods, loaded for bear, with new leadership and (if a lot of us have our way) explicit confidence that we are on the right path financiallly.

The media – Lambert among ’em – what the GOP grassroots to look at the task at hand and get depressed and discouraged.

There is no reason for this.  The turmoil of this past two weeks is good news.  The GOP will be a much stronger party – as long as we tackle this head-on.

To: TruTV
From: Mitch Berg, Very Irregular Watcher
Re: Evening Programming

Dear TruTV Programming execs,

More “Smoking Gun Presents “World’s Dumbest…””.

Less “Lizard Lick Towing”.

That is all.

Mitch Berg

“Men’s Health” magazine has presented its list of the “100 Hottest Women Of All Time”.

I’m going to submit it for general comment.

Observations:

• Jennifer Aniston #1, but Scarlett Johannson #12?  I smell publicist!
• Brigitte Bardot is #75 – behind Kim Kardashian (#26),Britney Spears (#4), and…Nicole Scherzinger? (# who cares)
• Six words:  Sophia Loren is 47; Paris Hilton is 46.

But most importantly – there is no reference to Ingrid Bergman. Anywhere.

Discuss.

I mean, if you can find time to check it out during a busy work day, of course.

The question isn’t so much “will the Packers go undefeated this season”.

The question is “who did Organized Crime decide will beat the Packers in the Super Bowl, by just inside the spread?”

More about the GOP Chair race,and the future of the position, later in the week.

The question for today is “what should a party look like these days?”

The DFL has followed a model similar to many IT companies; they are basically a shell.that administers groups of programmers in India, Ukraine and the Philippines.

The DFL is more or less the same. They’ve farmed out a lot of that policy, publicity, advertising, and interacting with the public stuff to other groups:  Alliance for a Better Minnesota,whose mission is to collect money from “progressive” plutocrats and unions to waterboard context about Republicans; “Win  Minnesota”, which collects money from plutocrats and unions to distribute to, well, Alliance for a Better Minnesota.  Then there’s the unions – the MFT,AFSCME, MAPE, the SEIU, Teamsters…

…and of course, the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits, Take-Action Minnesota, Common Cause,the League of Women Voters, MPIRG,and all the other non-profit agenda pimps…

…to say nothing of Big Feminist, Big Environment, Big Gay, Big Minority and Big Grievance (by which I mean the big, institutional lobbying arms of those social movements)

So what does this mean for a political party?

It means that the party can focus on running endorsements and a few other things, and leave all of the complicated stuff – advertising, communicating with voters, fundraising – to other other groups.  This is especially useful when it comes to trying to appeal to “big tents” full of voters; the unions can reach out to their constituents, and have their messages carefully sequestered away from Big Environment’s countervailing message, and neither will be the wiser.  (I think that’s part of the reason that so much of the messaging coming from the DFL proper is so very very stupid; all the talented communicators are working for 527s.

Of course, this means that the 527s are a little more equal than the voters – and to the DFL’s activists. And if Republicans wonder about how their party’s budget’s been spent, and want more transparency?  The money spent getting Democrats elected is accountable only to a raft of non-profit boards, union leadership and private parties with deep pockets.

Not a few Republicans have pondered if that’s the future of political parties; since so many businesses are doing more or less the same thing.  It’s probably irrelevant at the moment; there are not enough Republican-leaning 527s.  I’m not sure it’s something the GOP wants to do; I like the idea of standing in contrast with

More later this week.

How many businesses along University Avenue have been driven out of existence by the Central Corridor light rail contraction?

Hard to say – nobody involved in this boondoggle seems to be publicizing the counts.

But enough that someone’s trying to help people scavenge the space:

Starlings are birds that rest their tired wings in pre-existing nests, taking advantage of readily available real estate to make their temporary homes. Perhaps the same strategy can help some landlords along the Central Corridor fill their empty storefronts, at least until a more permanent tenant comes along.

Cute name.  But I think the only birds that are going to benefit from this disaster will be seagulls – scavengers that pick off the waste others leave behind.

Or Caribou.  Which isn’t a bird – it’s a big hoofed mammal – but it’s also a coffee shop that will enjoy lots of cheap rent in abandoned storefronts, in which to serve coffee to the condo-dwellers – the few that don’t drive everywhere, and also exist.

But I digress:

On Tuesday, two graduate students launched a new volunteer-driven effort to connect University Avenue property owners with artists, entrepreneurs and community groups looking for short-term offices, galleries or event space at bargain rents.

The Starling Project focuses on “meanwhile spaces,” according to co-founder Ben Shardlow, with the intention of filling empty storefronts with evidence of creative enterprises.

OK – it’s not a dumb idea, per se.  Eventually the market will fill the vacant space – it’s a big metro, still.  And those people and businesses in turn will…

…well, either languish in the arid parking-free no-mans-lands between the big stops, or get priced out of the market by the Caribous and Patagonias and McDonalds and Dunn Brothers that can afford the newly-gentrified rents at the  intersections that the Met Council has selected to be the “winners”.

Which, in turn, will be someone else’s grad school thesis.

…I see a story like this, and just shut the hell up with my whining.

(Via Amy Alkon)

It was seventy years ago today that an episode of American history occurred that is only just barely starting to see its due in our popular culture.

It may be too little, too late, as the generation that felt the reverence due the event passes from the public stage.

Consider this my attempt to fix that.

Wake Island was a tiny outpost in the middle of the west-central Pacific.  It was a stop

And seventy years ago today, the Japanese Navy (and its attendant Marines) planned to invade the island.

We’ll come back to that.

————

Wake Island, all 1,300-odd acres of it, is as barren a piece of real estate as there is in the world.  It had no permanent inhabitants – Marshall Islanders would hunt birds on the little coral atoll, but until the Western world invented long-range flight, the island served no habitable purpose to humanity.

The Pan-Am Clipper changed that.  The atoll’s three islets sheltered a lagoon whose calmer-than-the-open-ocean water was an ideal landing place for the Pan-Am Clipper’s flying boats (which was the mainstay of transoceanic travel in the 1930s, long before transcontinental jets).

A Clipper, anchored in the lagoon at Wake Island, 1936

So Pan-Am built a fuel and rest stop at Wake, with a hotel and a small village for the workers that would service the planes and the passengers as a near-last stop on the three-day, San Francisco to Hawaii, Midway Island, Wake Island, Guam, Manila, and Hong Kong itinerary.

And an airbase that was useful for long-range civilian aircraft was even more useful, in those years when we awaited war with Japan, to the military.  And so in the previous January, the Navy started buildng a base in the lagoon to support the fleet and, vitally in this pre-jet, pre-satellite days, long-range patrol aircraft.  The job was a crash program, bringin 1,200 American civilian workers to the island and, in August, in view of the skyrocketing tensions between the US and Japan, the island’s first permanent garrison, 400 Marines of the “First Marine Defense Battalion” and 55 more to run a dozen Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters of Marine Fighter Squadron 211.

A Marine F4F Wildcat, flying over a ground crewman on Wake Island before the war.

Along with seventy sailors, that made up the entire American force on the island, commanded by Lieutenant Commander WInfield Cunningham, USN.

The island was, in the perspective of the vast Pacific, practically on Japan’s doorstep.

————

Four days before, on December 7 (the eighth on their side of the International Date Line, on which Wake also lay), as Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and invaded Malaysia, Hong Kong, Guam and the Philippines, a Japanese air force raid from nearby Saipan hit Wake.  Wake’s defenders fared about the same as those at Pearl Harbor – eight of the 12 Marine fighters were destroyed on the ground in a bombing raid that also killed or wounded most of the men in the Marine air detachment.  The four surviving planes couldn’t catch the bombers (on December 8, anyway; they did kill two Japanese bombers in a followup raid the next day.

And then, on the morning of December 11, the Japanese closed in for the coup de grace.

And the Marines – armed with a bunch of old pre-World-War-1 cannon that’d been removed earlier that year from a scrapped battleship –  waited until the Japanese were less than two miles offshore before opening up a withering bombardment.  One of the Marine shells hit the shell magazine of the Japanese destroyer Hayate, blowing it up, killing the entire crew.  It was the first Japanese surface ship sunk in World War 2.

IJN Hayate

In the meantime, the four surviving Marine Wildcats, loaded with light bombs, took off, and attacked the Japanese invasion fleet – which was operating without direct air support (no aircraft carrier).  One Wildcat landed a 250-pound bomb on the afterdeck of the destroyer Kisaragi; ordinarily a destroyer would have a decent chance of surviving a hit by such a small bomb…

IJN Kisaragi

….but the Japanese sailors, displaying a lack of damage-proofing that would plague their Navy throughout the war, had left the anti-submarine depth charges armed.  They exploded, sinking Kisaragi, also with all hands.

The Marines also hit the Japanese flagship, the old light cruiser Yubari, nearly a dozen times in the lightly-armored superstructure…

IJN Yubari, which was sunk in 1944 by an American submarine.

…killing dozens and prompting the Japanese commander, Admirial Shigeyoshi Inouye, to abort the landing attempt.

The news of the victory- the closest the US came to good news that first awful week of the war – was spread far and wide throughout the US, along with Commander Cunningham’s message back to the US, which ended with the phrase “Send more Japs”.  It was treated as a “remember the Alamo”-type act of defiance. It was most likely “padding” – extraneous phrases thrown into messages to throw off Japanese-native translators eavesdropping on the transmission. But it was the sort of story Americans wanted to hear amid the unrelenting bad news of that week.

It was the first and last time in history that an amphibious attack would be repelled by coastal defenses.

And with the US and British Pacific Fleets sunk, Hong Kong lost, the Philippines invaded, British troops being outfought and outmaneuvered on the Malay approaches to Singapore, that was as close to a victory as the Western Allies could find in that dismal first few weeks of World War 2.

It couldn’t last.  While the Pentagon pondered sending a relief mission, bigger priorities – defending Hawaii from an expected invasion, reinforcing the Philippines – took precedence.  The Japanese peeled off two aircraft carriers that were returning from Pearl Harbor, and dispatched a brigade of Japanese marines.  And 12 days later, those Marines rammed two old destroyers ashore on a Wake-island beach, clambered off, and in a short, sharp, ugly battle subdued the Marines. It was incredibly bloody; estmates are that nearly 800 of the Japanese attackers were killed (on top of the entire crews of the two destroyers).  About 100 Americans were killed all told, with the rest being bundled off into captivity. Some of the American civilians were kept on the island – where, in 1943, a Japanese commander had them all executed.  One survivor managed to carve the inscription “98 Wake Island 5-10-43” into a rock before being captured and killed himself.

The "98 Rock" on Wake Island - today, a monument to the American victims of the Japanese war crime.

The Japanese commander was executed for the war crime after the war.

Ed Morrissey, for those that don’t know, is found at Hot Air.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism!

• Ed is off on assignment; I’m soloing today, from 1-3PM Central. Ed will be calling in at some point to talk about the latest round of Iowa debates.  Then we’ll talk with Barb Malzacher and Randy Gilbert about the future of the Minnesota GOP.
• Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – will be up tomorrow, from 1-3PM!
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  Join him from 9-11!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).  (Ed’s got the camera…)
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• Podcasts are now available on the AM1280 page!  (Ed and I are #2 – Brad is #3).
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

On NPR’s “All Things Considered” last night, they ran one of their audience-participation features, “Songs About Winter”.  Not just songs with winter in the title, but songs that remind you of winter.

Now, I’m not going to participate in ATC’s poll (as if), but I thought it was a fun question.  So – since it’s an off-election-year pre-holiday Friday and my traffic is lower than normal anyway, I’m going to play along in my own way.

For whatever reason, I associate “Glycerine” by the 90’s grunge-y pop band Bush with driving in nasty snowstorms. Something about that gaunt string part still reminds me of watching snow whipping around on the highway, and feeling chilly, and looking forward to trundling across the grocery store parking lot, cold to the bone in a way that was as much mental as meteorological, and racing home to make dinner for kids.  There was usually a subtext of financial worry, too.  I can’t hear the song to this day, even in the doggiest days of August, without feeling chilly, lonely and worn-down.

(UPDATE: Sometimes, the association affects me so much, I put the wrong video on my blog…)

It’s “A Long December” by Counting Crows, and no, it’s not just because December is in the title; it has a lot to do with the December after a nasty November breakup a few years back. It always fit my mood, and at least until we get into Christmas, it still does.

And all of the end-of-the-year reflection – at least until I crank the happy for the holidays – seems to lead me back to this one.

That should do for now…

Thugs  case a pregnant woman’s house…::

It all happened in broad daylight on Monday afternoon. That’s when the first man walked up to her kitchen door and began pounding and ringing the doorbell. He was clearly checking to see if anyone was home.

The woman recalls, “He started ringing the doorbell, probably 50 times, fast — ding, ding, ding, ding!”

The woman, who is nine weeks pregnant, was feeling sick and was in her bed. Not expecting anyone to visit, she called her boyfriend and then phoned police.

Beat in mind – the men had ignored two dogs, including a pit bull.  Getting a dog is the first thing most lefty hamsters suggest, rather than gunning up.

Anyway – dogs, locks and calling the cops didn’t work:

“About three minutes later, my dogs started barking again and I looked out the window and now there are two guys standing outside my home,” the woman recalled.

Within mere seconds, she heard the loud “bang” of the kitchen door being kicked open. With footsteps coming her way, she quietly stepped upstairs.

And what do you do when passive defense fails?

“So then I hustled up the stairs to grab our gun, and I came down and I loaded it and cocked it,” said the homeowner.

With a single pump of her 12-gauge shotgun, the would-be burglars bolted out the door and through the backyard.

“Yes, a shotgun racking is something you don’t forget if you’ve ever heard one. So, it frightened these two suspects off right away, they took off running,” said Coon Rapids Police Captain John Hattstrom.

Congratulations, law-abiding, armed and pregnant home-owner!

OK, no substantive contributions to the debate this time – at least not me, myself.

But the ruling junta at True North has dedicated a section at the blog to the race for chair – and, more importantly, has sent out a questionnaire to the known candidates for the office.

And True North will run the candidates’ answers.  This is part of True North’s ongoing mission to make sure the Minnesota center-right gets the information they need – which used to be a pretty radical notion in GOP circles..

If you’re a MNGOP activist, you’ll want to watch that space.

Kids make the best props for deranged lefties!

(UPDATE: And deranged righties too. I dislike it when people use their kids as political props, no matter who does it).

The 70 Years Project is re-running front page scans and stories from Minnesota newspapers on the relevant day in World War 2.

Yesterday was the seventieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

Sunday has two anniversaries; one of them is the Nazi declaration of war on the US (and you’ll see the other one on Sunday).

But today is the seventieth anniversary of the war’s most ghastly contribution to human history; it was the opening of a “camp” near the Polish village of Chelmno, on the grounds of a former baronial manor.  It was a placid looking place that would add a new word to the world’s vocabulary of evil: the German Vernichtungslager.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Concentration camps – places to put people who were for whatever reason inconvenient or needed to be held in one place – had existed for quite a while.  They got the name from the British during the Boer War, when they “concentrated” the families of Boer fighters in a few easily-guarded locations. They turned out to be ghastly places – not so much because the Brits intended it as through bureaucratic incompetence.

When the Nazis took power in Germany, their agenda bode ill for lots of people – gays, the mentally ill, Romany (“Gypsies”), Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents of all stripes, and especially the Jews.  And, following Lenin’s lead, they started straight in with their own Konzentrazionslagern – the Germans called them “KZs” – as a place to put all manner of undesirables.  There were hundreds of KZs, starting with Buchenwald in 1937, in Germany and in every corner of the Reich. They served many purposes – holding tanks for political prisoners, forced labor camps, even propaganda facades.  And thousands died in the KZs – from disease, malnutrition, overwork exposure, the brutal and capricious “discipilne”, even the whim of the guards; 50,000 at Buchwald and Ravensbrück, similar numbers at Dachau, Nordhausen, Theresienscadt, and Sachsenhausen and many, many more.

But the process of hauling a prisoner off to a KZ, there to die slowly of any number of causes, didn’t serve the goal of ridding the world of Jews (first; the Slavs and other “Lower” races would follow) fast enough.   The Nazis, being analytical Germans, experimented with many different means of killing people without all the procedural overburden, and removing impediments like “the human will to survive and endure”, from the equation; roaming teams of SS who’d shoot people in the hundreds were the first method, tried over the previous year and a half since the fall of Poland.

The idea had been broached to make the process more an industrial than military one.  The next question was “what sort of industrial process”.  The idea of using some sort of poison gas was broached.

Being a nation of engineers, the Nazis thought to prototype a couple of different approaches, to remove all the variables and find the optimal approach before switching into full production.  Among the variables to be removed was the pesky issue of “neighbors”; unlike the KZs, which would be tucked in next to towns and factories and farm regions all over Germany and the occupied countries, the new camps, Vernichtungslagern, or “Extermination Camps”, and called “VZs” by the Germans, would be be located in rural Poland – a backward place in those days, far from any potentially friendly borders, away from prying media eyes, and very sparsely populated by European standards.

And it was at Chelmno, seventy years ago today, that the first approach – vehicle exhaust gases piped into the back of a panel van jammed with 60-odd victims.

The Chelmno gas van.

…followed by burial in a mass grave in a nearby forest, was first tried.

Like any good engineers and scientists, they kept meticulous notes.  The exhaust gas -mostly carbon monoxide – was just too slow.  And burial was far too labor intensive; at another “prototype” VZ at Treblinka, cremation seemed to work much more efficiently. All of the data points led to the conclusion that carbon monoxide was far too slow and inefficient a means of killing; when the Nazis designed camps to optimize the approach, they settled on Zyklon-B, a form of prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) in pellet form, which worked twice as fast.

And so both of the “prototype” plants were shut down after relatively short runs in service; about 152,000 Jews, Poles and Gypsies died at Chelmno in the next two years.

We’ll have more on Treblinka later.

———-

If the above seems banal – it’s intentional.  The most jarring thing about reading about the Holocaust was its turning of modern industrial methods – the 1940’s equivalents of “Lean Six Sigma” and “Total Quality Management” – to the process of genocide, reducing it to a bean-counting, widget-producing exercise.  Genocide – the planned destruction of an entire race of humanity – had always been a brutal, bloody thing.

Seventy years ago today, the effort to turn it into just another waterfall project got underway for real.

OK – so we’ve established that the MNGOP needs to fix its finances, and knock off the circular firing squads.  That’s all fairly obvious – although seemingly inscrutable to some in the party.

But where do we go from here when it comes to leadership?

Derek Brigham at Freedom Dogs and True North wrote up the spec sheet:

My ideal chair would be a person who:

—Relates VERY WELL with the grassroots without alienating the establishment. Working the other way around has been the norm since I have been involved, but this will no longer work—honestly it never did. The numbers are with the grassroots, the leader should reflect this.

This is a tough one.  The “Grassroots” include a lot of people who come to their first meetings full of whiz and vinegar for an issue – who peter out as the reality of the long-term slog of party politics sets in.  And that’s where most of the energy comes from.  It’s a tough row to hoe.

—Envisions the MNGOP massively simplifying its tasks. As I wrote on Twitter a few days ago: “New agenda for party: do less, simplify, keep on track, let go of what you suck at, kick ass at what you do well”. The MNGOP at least for some time to come can not be all things to all people.

And it’s here that the DFL may have one of its few right ideas.  As I noted a few weeks back, the DFL is really just a holding company that outsources a good chunk of its organizing,media and policy work to outside groups with an interest in the subjects (where “subject” is something like, say, “running a toxic sleaze campaign against Tom Emmer” or some such). It’s not the dumbest idea they’ve had.

—Can pull in BIG Money players, and have several routes to bring in small (read: a buck at a time) donations.

Goes without saying. But it’s good Derek said it.

—Operates with transparency and honesty. People loathe the last many years of bad bookkeeping. Conservatives pride themselves on financial efficiency.

The next party chair is going to face very angry party electorate demanding a very high standard.

—Would not push morality issues. The world is in economic collapse, this should be easy. Get with the basics: Small government, Individual liberty and responsibility, Create an environment for prosperity.

Y’see, that should be a gimme.  The party isn’t supposed to push policy.  It’s a fund-raising, communications and logistics organization (I’m oversimplifying, but not much).

—Become THE friendly oasis for businesses with our message. The DFL and Dayton are an absolute cancer to business and productivity in this state. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

While that’s the candidates’ job, the party does need to make sure it’s clear on its message.  The 2010 elections showed that we can do it.

—Wants to take the bloated party platform down to fewer words than the Gettysburg address. Again, keep the principles strong and the words few.

Derek and I have been working on that for a while.

Another Twitter post I put up was this: “Want a party? Musts: Unite around core principles, Focus on opponents, Appeal to the Big money players, Avoid morality issues” Yes I do repeat myself a bit, but key in that statement was: Focus on opponents. There is a reason we play pin the tail on the donkey and not the other way around. You want to excel at in-fighting, go to a family reunion.

Let me sum it up: Win Elections For Our Principles.

And that’s gonna be an interesting order to fill.

…so I don’t know if I’m right to bag on DFL-training-ground law firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi for bragging up an award for their “pro-bono” work in blocking an AT&T cell tower near the Boundary Waters…:

The case centered around a 450-foot cell-phone tower AT&T proposed to build near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The tower would have despoiled the scenic and aesthetic resources of the protected Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for miles and would have posed a significant threat to migratory birds. The Friends challenged the project under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, which gives citizens the right to sue to block projects that have the potential to diminish environmental quality.

Our representation culminated in a four day bench trial with 15 live witnesses and 17 witnesses by deposition. After carefully considering the evidence, the court issued a 58-page order, ruling in favor of the Friends and permanently enjoining AT&T from constructing any tower in this location taller than 199-feet.

…while demanding court costs for the case.

I mean, it’s not “pro bono” if they get paid, is it?

No, not the Minnesota GOP Chairman election; the MNGOP is a lot more unified that the media wants you to think it is.

No, this is the important election; the one for mayor of the MInnesota Organization of Bloggers.

Learned Foot – the Secretary of State  for Life at the MOB – is taking nominations.  Hurry on over to Kool Aid Report and get nominated before the (as-yet-undefined) filing deadline.

This is going to be a great election campaign!

Last week, we reported that according to the latest Minnesota Management and Budget figures, Minnesota’s state government took in almost $900 million more than it spent in the last year.

As I noted, it’s not all good news, for quite a number of reasons.  Some of the extra money came from the Feds.  Some of it was borroewed from future tobacco settlement fund payments – a source that should not only not be a piggy bank to plunder, notwithstanding that it should not exist at all.  And even if it was entirely due to the economy rebounding (and Minnesota’s is doing better than the national average, thanks in no small part to the GOP sweep last fall), the fact is that surpluses only mean that government is taking more from the economy than it needs; real surpluses should be rebated to the taxpayers – as in “people who pay taxes” – immediately.  But that’s a nicety for better times, not to mention genuine surpluses.  We’ll come back to that (no doubt after Obama and Dayton are bundled off to retirement).

A couple of the DFL legislators who caused the problem in the first place, Lyndon Carlson (the DFLer who first entered the Senate in 1928) and Dick Cohen, who inhabits a DFL sinecure in Highland Park, L were granted space in the Strib to pee in the GOP’s Whwaties:

We all breathed a sigh of relief when last week’s updated economic forecast showed a positive balance for the state in the current budget year. This was unexpected good news.

However, if we look at the budget by comparing both the “checking account” and the “credit card statement” — the way families and businesses do everyday — we’ll see our state’s structural budget problem is far from solved.

When a Republican talks about “structural budget problems”, you can be sure she’s talking things like “demand based budgeting – where every bureaucracy’s budget equals the previous budget, plus the bureacracy’s forecast, and inevitably self-serving, expected increase in delivering its service”.

When DFLers like Cohen and Carlson talk about “structural budget problems”, they mean “bureaucracies not getting what they demand, when they demand it”.

Keep that in mind as we continue.

Responding to the forecast, Republicans were quick to pat themselves on the back. House Speaker Kurt Zellers praised their “fiscal restraint” and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch lauded how the state had “lived within its means.”

Both of which are both true and false; the state did get federal money, and did borrow against future Tobacco Shakedown proceeds.

Carlson and Cohen’s deceit lies in the details:

Most Minnesotans, looking at the numbers, would see it differently. Here’s a look at each side of the ledger. Judge for yourself:

Checking Balance: $876 million. The updated economic forecast shows Minnesota has a current “surplus” of $876 million. Like a household checking account, these are funds to cover expenses during the budget cycle we’re currently in.

But unlike most checking accounts, our state’s balance has not been completely generated through money that’s been saved up.

Of course not.  The GOP, faced with an intransigent governor who is in office solely to serve the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota”, “Take Action Minnesota”, “Common Cause” and the unions, bent on the budget last session, spending a couple billion more than they should have,

Had we done it the way the conservatives said to do it, we’d have multibillion-dollar surplus and no borrowed money.

They’d also have been able to eliminate statements this:

Current Debt: $4.2 billion. Our state’s “credit card statement” reveals a lot of new red ink due to the budget Republicans passed after taking our state to a government shutdown. In the next budget cycle, Minnesotans will face a $1.3 billion budget deficit.

This has been a familiar story. In eight of 10 years, the state has faced a deficit. Instead of making permanent adjustments to our budget, we have used one-time dollars, accounting shifts, and borrowing. All this patchwork and duct tape hasn’t solved the problem.

This takes us back to the “structural budget problems”, above.  The only deficit is in terms of current spending versus the bureaucracy’s projected future demands.  To use Cohen and Carlson’s “family budget” example, it’s like giving your kid a $20/month cell phone plan and a $30 flip phone today, and having her tell you your bill is going to $250 plus $80 a month next year because, naturally, you’re getting them IPhones, whether you have the money to pay for it or not.

You know what you’d tell your daughter.  It’s exactly what we, The People, need to tell Carlson and Cohen.

They do not have first dibs on what we earn.  Our first and foremost job as citizens of Minnesota is not to keep the bureaucracy fat and happy, any more than it is to buy your kid and IPhone just because she wants one.

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