I’m going to go back to Dave Mindeman’s piece at mnpACT, about the most recent Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey of Minnesota politics, for the numbers on some issues that don’t pertain to Governor Dayton and the Legislature.

Minnesota’s constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is headed for a close vote. 48% of voters say they support it while 44% are opposed.

I neither support nor oppose the Amendment, but I have a fearless prediction; if the PPP poll, which trends a little left and features a left-heavy sample, calls it a four point race today, it’ll be 49-41 in November.

Let’s go back to the whole “people like their own bastards” bit:  Mindeman, mindful of the poll results, asks:

So, WHERE is the DFL candidates for MN-02 and MN-06 ? MN-03 and MN-08 seem to have multiple candidates in the mix …. if there are going to be any coattails from the top to help the State Legislature candidates, doesn’t there need to be someone in every district ?

There are two answers:  First, it’s further evidence that people like their own bastards; while national polling shows that Congress is less popular than Slobodan Milosevic, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know that John Kline and Michele Bachmann will win their districts by 30 and 15 points respectively, even if the Dems endorsed Zombie JFK to run for the office.

“Even though Congress is unpopular?”

Yep.  As noted earlier today, polls of legislative bodies as a whole are almost always misleading.  Congress may be unpopular; Kline and Bachmann are not.

BTW … do you think the mature approach that Governor Dayton has taken on the Vikiings stadium has helped … even if the taxpayers don’t want to pay for it, they sure don’t want to the lose the business … and obviously the Governor is trying.

If by “mature approach” Mindeman means coming out of his closet long enough to croak “Uh want ivverbaddy to git to WOARK and sulve the prollum”, then retreating to the closet and letting the Legislature, the cities, the counties, the NFL and Wilf do all the work?  It may or may not be “mature”, but it’s certainly easier on the poll numbers.

This particular chanting point has been making the rounds this week – a “Public Policy Polling” (PPP) survey appears to show that Mark Dayton is dreamily popular, and the people just can’t stand the GOP-run legislature.

It’s made the rounds of most of the mainstream media, the leftyblogs, and the lowest of the bunch, the  City Pages.  I figured I’d pick on Dave Mindeman at mnpACTttp and his take on it because unlike way too many Twin Cities leftybloggers, he’s articulate, recites the chanting point pretty much verbatim, and is otherwise not an idiot.

Mark Dayton’s numbers have improved since PPP last polled Minnesota in May and he’s one of the most popular Governors in the country.

Now, the numbers would seem to bear that statement out.  Let’s unpack them before we move on.

In observing PPP polls over the past couple of cycles, their results seem to consistently fall a little to the left of how Minnesota reality eventually shakes out.  Not in an egregions-to-the-point-of-fraud kind of way, like the Humphrey Institute or Strib Minnesota polls, but it’s noticeable.

I also think – and this is a theory, not something I’m stating as fact, but a decade of observation has led a lot of us on the right to wonder if there’s something to it – that liberals are much more prone to answer polls, especially in between election cycles.

Let’s ignore both of those for the moment.  Let’s talk about the surface indicators for this polling:

A little belated birthday present for Mark. Dayton has an approval rating of 53%, while disapproval is at 34% — a 19% spread.

The numbers have led Mindeman – and most other lefties – to a misleading conclusion.  Not wrong – I’m not telling people not to trust their lying eyes – but there’s more in those numbers than meets the eye.  Mindeman and the rest of the lefties are ignoring a key bit of American political behavior.

The poll covers the time between the shutdown and the present – when Dayton really didn’t do anything.  For that matter, he really didn’t do anything during the last session, or the shutdown.  He’s been for the most part a non-entity.  And if you don’t do anything – either positive or negative – then your numbers are going to be juuuuust fine.  Or at least fairly steady.

(Opposite case in point – Tim Pawlenty, who fought a two-court DFL advantage in 2009 and 2010 with aggression and passion.  He did not sit in his office drinking Kombucha or, given his hockey-playing pedigree, PBR, and his poll numbers showed it.  They were “lived-in”.  Who was a better governor?  Depends, now, doesn’t it?)

During the session, and the shutdown, it was the Legislature that did all the heavy lifting.  Dayton sat in his office, released the occasional demand, and until his final, fatal tour around the state, where he realized that getting behind his own plan would be political suicide, really did nothing.  And after that tour, when he folded his cards, he did so quietly, minimizing if not the GOP’s victory at least his own defeat.

In other words, he’s played defense.  He’s sat back and let the other guys take the hit.  The media, naturally, abet this behavior.

And in a state as polarized as Minnesota is, when you actually do things, you will take the hit – especially given our DFL-owned-and-operated media, whose interest in fluffing Dayton is obvious and constant.

And the Legisature has done things – affirmative things during the session and the shutdown, many of which pissed off Democrats and a few of which irritated the more conservative, and also not-so-affirmative things that have been all over the news lately.  Of course, sitting back and being passive-aggressive, like Dayton, was not an option for the Legislative branch; they were sent to Saint Paul on a mission, and the mission wasn’t going to get done without some serious action, and given the number of GOP freshmen who said they didn’t care if they only served a term, some fallout was to be expected.  It was inevitable.

But there’s more.

Dayton may get himself an easier legislature to work with next year. Democrats lead the generic legislative ballot in the state by a 48-39 margin. If that holds through November they should win back a whole lot of the seats they lost in 2010. It’s not that legislative Democrats are popular- only 31% of voters have a favorable opinion of them to 49% with a negative one. But legislative Republicans have horrible numbers. Their favorability rating is 23% with 62% of voters viewing them negatively. That honeymoon wore off real fast.

And here Mindeman and the rest of the metro chattering class fall into the seductive charms of drawing using high-level data to draw high-level conclusions on low-level questions.  Mindeman – and the entire regional left – have scoped the data wrong. I suggest.  The fact is that “generic” never manages to get endorsed to run for the Legislature.

The Legislature will take popularity hits – they, as a body, did all the work.

The Legislature, as a body, will always lag a do-nothing governor under those circumstances.  Just like Congress does.

But aggregate polls of the entire Legislature – those mythical “generic” legislators – are meaningless, just like aggregate polls of Congress.  People may want to vote the bastards in general out, but people tend, generally, to support their own bastard.  There are exceptions – they voted a lot of incumbent “bastards” out in 2006 and 2010 – but as a very general rule, unless you have a wave election, incumbency has its virtues.  This election may be many things – it may return both chambers of Congress to the GOP – but I don’t think anyone’s predicting a wave yet.

Tack on the fact that PPP polls trend left, that poll respondents this early in the cycle trend left, that the PPP poll was of registered voters (who always trend left), and the fact that the poll is meaningless, and the additional fact that redistricting – provided that it reflects actual demographic shifts rather than the DFL’s rhetoric – should favor the GOP, and I’m a lot less worried about this poll than the DFL, media (ptr) and the chattering classes want you to be.

And despite those numbers the GOP legislature continues to play ultra partisan games.

Well, yeah, Dave.  They know the numbers are meaningless.  So does the DFL.

Here, basically, it is:

1. Take control of the House and Senate – and, possibly, the White House – this fall.
2. WIth Obamacare in jeopardy, and a decent chance of a new, Tea-Party-allied GOP majority in the house to gridlock Obama or (hopefully) bolster and enforce Romney’s courage as a conservative, business gets off the fence.  Private capital, currently sitting in banks all over the world, starts flowing again.  Businesses can get capital – and they’re willing to hire people rather than bank money against the regulations and expenses of Obamacare.
3. The economy quickly resumes boom mode…
4. …unless, of course, the GOP majority goes native, DC-style, again, the way they did from 1998 to 2006, and starts spending like worthless Democrats like our idiotic Frist majority did.  Hopefully the conservative grassroots will keep their fighting edge…well, forever.  I goess that’s partly my job.

Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media reports that the Catholic Church – or parts of it, anyway – are up in arms (as it were) over the Obama administration’s mandates:

My Catholic priest, Father Larry Swink, delivered a homily on Sunday that I told him would make headlines. In the toughest sermon I have ever heard from a pulpit, he attacked the Obama Administration as evil, even demonic, and warned of religious persecution ahead. What was also newsworthy about the sermon was that he cited The Washington Post in agreement—not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

What is happening is extraordinary and unprecedented. The Catholic Church is in open revolt against the Obama Administration, with Fr. Swink noting from the pulpit that priests across the archdiocese were joining the call on Sunday to rally Catholics to resistance against the U.S. Government. He said we are entering a time of religious persecution and that Catholics and others will have to make a final decision about which side they are on.

If true, that’s great news – but I gotta say I’m not nearly as sanguine.

I’m not Catholic – and in my observation, most Catholics outside the clergy and intelligentsia are as diligently observant of the Vatican’s rules as most Jews are of Kosher laws; birth control and hamburger on Friday are as common among Catholics as the odd bit of ham and Saturday shopping trips are among mainstream Jews.

And I know – exceptions exist, including among readers of this blog.  But in my observation, there are vast swathes of the Catholic Church, in major cities, that either turns a blind eye to the inconvenient parts of the Vatican’s rules, or is willing to rationalize and ignore them in pursuit of a “progressive” political agenda – which accounts for a huge number of Catholic liberals I personally know.

Oh, the Bishops will make a ruckus:

The issue is what the Catholic Bishops have called a “literally unconscionable” edict by the Obama Administration demanding that sterilization, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans.

At a time when the media are full of reports about who is ahead and behind in the polls, and who will win the next Republican presidential primary, this incredible uprising in the Catholic Church is something that could not only overshadow the political campaign season, but also may have a major impact on the ultimate outcome—if Republicans know how to handle it. This matter goes beyond partisan politics to the growing perception of an unconstitutional Obama Administration assault on religious freedom. To hear the Catholic Bishops and Priests describe it, our constitutional republic and our freedoms hang in the balance.

But if you go to St. Joan of Arc (to pick a far-left parish of my acquaintance), it’s all an un-issue, ignored for the “greater good”; many, perhaps the majority of Catholic parishes I know of in the Twin CIties would trade, at the clerical level as well as among a fair chunk of the laity, the Nicene Creed for single-payer health care and Cap and Trade.

So am I wrong?  I’d especially like to hear from Catholics, here.  Does anyone at your parish – from your priests on down – care about Obamacare?  Has that “caring” been manifested in the form of “telling the congregation that it’s wrong, and that it’s going to screw with the what the Catholic Church supposedly holds dear?”

I’d be interested in hearing.

In Lori Sturdevant’s world, there’s no recession. Money is just….there.

Government creates it. And its allocation is like a chess game between the good guys (the DFL) and those whose names must not be mentioned (Republicans who don’t act like DFLers, which these days is most of them).

Snug a her cube above the city (assuming she comes to the office at all anymore), it’s all just an academic parlor game to her.

I trust that Gov. Mark Dayton included $35 million for expansion of Rochester’s Mayo Civic Center in his proposed bonding bill solely because he shares economic futurist Richard Florida’s vision for Minnesota’s third-largest city.

You go right ahead and “trust” that a politician, playing politics, would allocate budgets based on a “futurist’s” yapping.

Still, things are looking rosy in Rochester:

Its mix of world-class medicine, computing and agribusiness positions it to become the Austin, Texas, of the north. All it lacks is a few smart public-sector sparks — like a bona fide convention center.

Actually, I think two things could be fairly said:

1. If the economy of this GOP-leaning city is, in fact, booming, then they don’t really “lack” those public-sector “sparks” at all, now?  Do they?
2. Right, Lori Sturdevant – what could possibly put the “spark”, the cherry on the sundae of a booming economy like public spending!

I’m sure that prospect, and not the chance to put new Senate GOP Majority Leader David Senjem in an uncomfortable spot, drove the DFL governor’s thinking.

Mostly, anyway.

Let’s stop for a moment, here.

This is the same Lori Sturdevant who charges at Republicans like an enraged schoolmam at the faintest hint of “political games” aimed at the DFL – like any bill that exploits a wedge issue that will put the DFL on the short end of the PR stick – and sniffs with the victorian vapours about the need for “bipartisanship” and “cooperation”.  As long as the DFL is losing.

And when the shoe is on the other foot (or she and her editorial board want the people to think it’s on the other foot)?  Behold, Lori “As Snarky As Sally Sorenson” Sturdevant.

Just so we’re clear on this.

Rochester has been coming to the State Capitol since 2008 to pitch a plan for a 180,000-square-foot, $77 million addition to the Mayo Civic Center. The city is asking the state to pay half of the bill.

I’ll just bet they are.

The City of Rochester does, indeed, make a case that the Civic Center could be a useful addition to the community; it could host more than its fair share of medical conventions alone.  In theory.

Which is fine, but when the state is fighting to get its outgo inside its income, choices have to be made. Nobody likes it when their choice gets the short straw – but you can’t have everything…

…unless you live in Lori Sturdevant’s little world, where unicorns bring money down from the clouds.

But in 2010, the Tea-infused GOP had lost its appetite for projects that could be cast as local pork. After approving planning money for the Mayo Civic Center in 2008, Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed construction funds in 2010.

He did the same to civic center proposals in Mankato and St. Cloud. Notably, all three places elected Republicans in 2010. The class of 2010 came to St. Paul convinced that austerity plays better with voters than do government-funded development dreams.

Right.

Because the Freshman class in the legislatue knows that money doesn’t comes from Studevant’s magic unicorns.  It comes from taxpayers – out of our incomes.

Of course, Sturdevant doesn’t mention that there is all sorts of money in the bonding bill that could go toward the Rochester Civic Center – which is the sot of development that could help make some money and be, hypothetically, of some use.

How many Rochester Civilc Centers could we float for what we’e pouring into another idiotic money-pit light-rail line?  Or the many other wastes of taxpayer money hiding in Dayton’s bonding bill?

Sturdevant is too busy giggling about how “bipartisan” she’s not to be interested in any of that.

“For me, it’s a question of mathematics,” [Senate majority leader Dave Senjem] said. “How do we make this work?”

Danger, Dave.  Math is hard.  The Strib Editorial board and the DFL, via their mouthpiece Sturdevant, can’t do it.

No, it’s in this piece that we see the exposed id of the DFL in big LCD letters, like on the outside of that other civic center built with bonds, the Excel:

The smaller the GOP bonding bill gets, the more Senjem will be torn between the pleadings of his city and the desires of his caucus. And the more Senjem caters to his parsimonious peers, the more Dayton can campaign this fall saying that if Rochester wants state government to help it grow, it should elect DFLers.

There it is – the exposed id of the DFL in full glory.  “Elect us, and you get your toys.  You want toys, don’t you?  BIg mommy State of Minnesota would love to buy you a toy – it’s just big bad daddy GOP that’s keeping it away from you.  Toys are nice!   The money will come from fluffy unicorns “The Rich”!   You like unicorns, don’t you?”

It is the only idea they have – “use cheap and empty rhetoric to gain, or regain, power”.

Sturdevant and the rest of the Strib editorial board like power.  Or liked it, back when the unicorns brought it to them, in their offices high above Portland Avenue.

Check out Carrie Lucking of the Alliance For A Better Minnesota Ministry Of Truth, essentially admitting that Governor Dayton’s Jerbs Plan is exactly what I said it was – a sound bite that isn’t intended to pass the legislature, merely to give the DFL a chanting point designed to give the DFL something to wave in front of ill-informed voters this fall (“Look!  The GOP voted down a jerbs program! They’re taking yer jerbs!”)

Can I call ’em or what?

The DFL has turned its entire messaging operation over to the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, which – as we showed in 2010 – is owned and operated by the unions and “The 1%”,  liberal plutocrats with very deep pockets.

In the 2010 campaign, they raised lying, disingenuity, intellectual dishonesty and cowardice to amazing new levels. They are testimony to the liberal ideal that the ends justify your means – and the only end that matters is gaining and retaining power.  Minnesota’s last gubernatorial election was swung entirely by the fact that ABM was able to find at least 8,000 Minnesotans who don’t read blogs and who took anything they heard from a mainstream media just would not, cou.

There is one rule to remember when reading or watching any ABM production; they are padding the facts, bludgeoning context.  If they say it, it’s a lie – or at the very least, it’s wrong, and anyone who bothers to check knows it.   If Denise Cardinal or Carrie Lucking (ABM’s current and former executive directors stenos for Alita Messinger and Elliot Seid) tell you their names are Denise Cardinal and Carrie Lucking, double-check them. There is an oops buried in there somewhere.  Not sure how, but bank on it.

Their ideal – and the mission for which they are so very well-paid – is to find the Big Lies that will spin the election, and tell them often enough so that just enough dim-witted and gullible Minnesotans buy it.

And this blog’s mission in this coming election is to make sure everyone with a brain to think knows exactly what ABM is; the Big Lie Factory.  The DFL’s “Ministry Of Truth”

It’s what passes for messaging in the DFL these days.  Bankrupt of any real ideas, it’s probably the best they can do.

Can Minnesota do better?

We’re 8,000 votes away.

Don’t forget – if you live in Ramsey County, they’re collecting petition signatures against a stadium tax at Donatelli’s in White Bear today from until 6PM.

Let’s kill this idea but good.

Rep. Allan Westhas words for our nation’s lefty leaders:

“Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America,” Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said at the Palm Beach County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner. West represents the district in the U.S. Congress.

Obviously he’s a racist.

More of that universal consensus on global warming in action:

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by…

By whom?

What bunch of tea bagging wing nuts released this bit of heresy?

…the [UK] Met[eorology] Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

It might be lonely at those “Nuremberg Trials for Denialists”.

Lonely and cold.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

I missed this when it ran last Fall:

Best line is the last line. That’s the Met Council’s Central Corridor policy to a tee.

The last line:

“People need to realize that public transportation isn’t just for some poor sucker to take to work,” Collier said. “He should also be taking it to the shopping mall, the supermarket, and the laundromat.”

There will be more room for Ted Mondale’s BMW when your 1998 Taurus is off the road.

The No Stadium Tax petition website is right here. There’s also a signing party at Donatelli’s in White Bear on Monday from 11AM to 6PM.

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

• Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.
• Ed is out on assignment today, so I’ll be in to do the voodoo I do from 1-3PM.  Today I’ll be talking the opening of the session, the presidential horserace, the endorsement process from caucuses to the convention, and everything in between.  Except the Kardashians.
• 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) .
• 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!

Since everyone else is launching pressure groups and PACs, I figure it’s high time I did the same.

Just in time for the Minnesota Caucuses, I’m announcing my new PAC, “Eventual Romney Supporters For Santorum Or Paul”.

To be a member of (or contributor to) ERSFSOP, you need to do the following:

• Recognize the true goal for conservatives in the general election – to replace Barack Obama with someone who will shrink government and get it out of the way of economic recovery.
• Recognize, in addition, that most important facet of the endorsement process; pulling like mad for candidates that reflect your values, and do so with a voice so loud and powerful that whomever wins the nomination needs to pay attention, even if it’s not yours.

And so the ERSFSOP charter basically says this:

I, a conservative base voter, recognize the primary need to to get Barack Obama out of office in favor of virtually any conservative-enough Republican, and recognize that Romney is probably still on the inside track to the nomination.  I also am uncomfortable with the depth of Romney’s commitment to conservative economic princpiples.  And so until Candidate Romney makes his commitment to conservative economic policy – especially repeal of Obamacare and drastic cuts to spending and the size of government – an integral part of his campaign, I will be caucusing for Santorum, or Ron Paul, or even plugging my nose and caucusing for the born-again Alinky-ite, Gingrich.  And so until you commit to the policies we support, your path to the nomination has a speed bump.   

Your choice, Governor Romney; a 55 gallon drum of Maalox, or a clear path to the convention.

Your move.

Any takers?

A few years ago, on a brutally-cold winter night, I was standing at a bus stop on University Avenue at Oxford with a bag of groceries. An older – or older-looking – guy, wobbling from a day of drinking, wobbled around on the sidewalk behind me (It was 7PM, although dark as midnight in mid-January).  The guy wasn’t feeling the cold.  He was muttering something under his breath.  He seemed agitated.  I kept my guard up.

I heard a car engine accelerate behind me – fast.  I turned, and saw a Saint Paul police cruiser, pouring on the steam and pulling across two lanes of traffic and heading straight toward the bus stop.

I noticed the drunk guy had started to amble north up Oxford Steet.

The cops slammed on the brakes and hit the whoopie lights just as they pulled around onto Oxford and squalled to a hard stop.  The two cops bailed out, fast, and pulled their clubs as they raced toward the old guy.  They took him down, hard.

Two more units pulled up in the next thirty seconds or so.  Whoopie lights blazing, the corner felt warmer all of a sudden.

This being University, the 16 and 50 buses were both late – so I watched as the cops cuffed the guy, bundled him into the first cruiser, and drove away.  Being a good blogger, I asked one of the cops what was up.

The cop motioned toward a bar further down University.  “He beat a guy with a chair.  Put him in the hospital, probably in critical condition”.

They took off.

And still I waited for the 16.

I thought about this when I got an email from Joe Doakes this morning:

These are the prospective riders of the Light Rail.

The link is to a piece in the PiPress about a shooting on Uni:

A man was injured in a shooting at a University Avenue bus stop in St. Paul on Thursday evening, and police believe there were multiple witnesses who have yet to come forward.

The victim, who was taken to Regions Hospital with a gunshot wound to his leg, was at a bus stop at the southeast corner of University Avenue and Dale Street when he was shot about 6:45 p.m…Anyone with information should call St. Paul police at 651-266-5650.

According to the story, three guys including the shooter crossed Dale Street, opened fire as cars sat at the light, and hit the victim.  They helpfully point out that the cops don’t believe it was a random shooting.

Back to Doakes:

Do you still think people will come from Woodbury to ride that train?

And if they don’t, who will shop at the newly renovated stores?

That’s always been my big question about the Central Corridor – especially about the choice to make it a “Light Rail” train rather than a trolley which, if you just have to have a freaking train, makes a lot more sense.  “Light Rail” is for people who whiz through the neighborhiood on their way from one downtown, or one of the colleges, to the other.  It’s not people going from WalMart or Rainbow with a bag of groceries who are trying to get down to Grotto for the four block walk to their house.  It is designed, scaled, and stationed to carry people through the Midway and Frogtown with as little interaction with the neighborhood as possible.

And the more I look at this boondoggle, the more fanciful – almost Jetsons-like – the “development” scenarios for the stretch between Cleveland and the Capitol seem.  What – someone en route from their legislative assistant job at the Capitol to their apaartment on Washington is going to stop at UniDale for a mocha?

Huh?

The train is going to largely cut the north side of the street off from the south side.  What does that do to neighborhoods that are, as urban planners euphemize, “in transition?”  It does what it did when they drove a freeway through Phillips (the part of Minneapolis between Franklin/Lake and 35/Hiawatha), or Frogtown (St. Paul from Lexington/Western and Como/94).

Any takers?

The “bad” news?  While the GOP thrashes its way through an uncommonly-gnarly primary battle, the Obamessiah’s poll numbers look rosy in Minnesota:

President Barack Obama holds a comfortable lead in Minnesota over all the Republicans seeking the GOP nomination, according to a new survey from…

The better news?  It’s just…

….Public Policy Polling.

…whose results always give Democrats a couple of unearned points.  Not sure how, and I’m not saying they’re as bad as the Minnesota or Humphrey Polls, but the skew seems to have been consistent.  As much time as I spent tracking the one-sided inaccuracy of media polls last year (pointing out the disgraceful long-term pro-Democrat biases of the Humphrey and Strib polls), I’ll be doing even more this year.

Although Obama’s advantage over rivals such as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich has fallen since last May, the president still holds an edge over the two current front-runners for the Republican nod among voters in Minnesota, the poll found.

All the usual disclaimers apply; it’s early, the GOP has no unified candidate and is stuck in intra-party squabbling (as we should be!), and the poll is getting media placement mainly to try to demoralize Republicans and prepare the ground for Democrat GOTV efforts, and likely as not there’s a systematic bias.

Against Romney, 51 percent chose Obama compared to 41 percent for Romney, the same margin by which Obama beat John McCain in 2008, the pollster notes. Obama holds a 15-point lead over Gingrich, 54 percent to 39 percent, and a 12- and 13-point lead over Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, respectively.

Nothing new here.  Carry on. .

At times like this, I like to remember William F. Buckley’s formula for picking candidates; picking the one that matched the title of this post.

Now, “most conservative” clause gets overlooked.  And I’m sorry to say, I’m less and less convinced Newt Gingrich is “conservative” as much as he is “opportunistic”; that he’s as “conservative” as Bill Clinton was “progressive”; in other words, whatever it takes to get elected.  And after Gingrich’s shameless descent into Alinsyite smear-jobbing his past month, I’m not convinced I could support the guy and sleep at night.

But for now, let’s focus on the “who can win” bit.

Romney led Obama by 47 percent to 42 percent in the Florida survey, while Obama topped Gingrich by 9 points, 49 percent to 40 percent. Among independents, Obama led Romney 44 percent to 38 percent and opened up a 56 percent to 29 percent advantage over Gingrich. Gingrich grabbed 12 percent of registered Democrats, while Romney secured 18 percent of registered Democrats.

“Newt Gingrich is weak among Florida independents and likely Democratic voters compared to Romney,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. “If Florida is one of six key states that swings the national election, independents in Florida hold that key, and this poll suggests that Newt won’t be able to secure Florida for his party.”

In the popularity contest, Gingrich again did not fare well. He holds a 29 percent favorable and 58 percent unfavorable rating statewide among all likely voters. By contrast, Romney had a 44 percent favorable and 37 percent unfavorable rating. Romney’s popularity was lower among independents: 37 percent favorable and 36 percent unfavorable, while Gingrich’s popularity among independents imploded to 19 percent favorable with 70 percent unfavorable.

Even if I took Gingrich’s “conservatism” at face value – and I largely do not, not anymore – that, if true (and borne out by mo betta polling) really calls the question for me.

The question isn’t “who’s better at goading the media”; that’s not the President’s Press Secretary’s job.

The question isn’t “who can game the political mechanics better” – that’s what gave us Barack Obama.

The question is “Who is both conservative enough and who beat Obama?”

I have my serious, serious doubts.

And if Gingrich can’t convince me of both, he can forget it.

I’m going to pick the most conservative candidate who can win.

And I don’ think Gingrich is either.

KFAI Radio on the West Bank will be running an interview with me by Allison Herrera on their 9AM “Weekly News” show.  The subject was Voter ID.

KFAI reaching out for conservative counterpoint?  That’s not the KFAI I used to volunteer at!

I will try to tune in on the stream, work schedule permitting – although if there’s anything I hate more than hearing my recorded voice, it’s my voice as recorded after being filtered through a cheap cell phone.  But what the heck, I’m game.

Anyway, check it out.

There was good news and rejoicing; the SEALS continued their winning streak, rescuing an American and Danish hostage in Somalia.

But buried in the good news is a sign of the Obama Administraion’s myopia.

The Navy SEAL operation that freed two Western hostages in Somalia is representative of the Obama administration’s pledge to build a smaller, more agile military force that can carry out surgical counterterrorist strikes to cripple an enemy.

That’s a strategy much preferred to the land invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost so much American blood and treasure over the past decade. The contrast to a full-bore invasion is stark: A small, daring team storms a pirate encampment on a near-moonless night, kills nine kidnappers and whisks the hostages to safety.

It all sounds good.  And so far, it is.

Here’s where the logic breaks down:

Special operations forces, trained for such clandestine missions, have become a more prominent tool in the military’s kit since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that led to the ongoing war in Afghanistan. The administration is expected to announce Thursday that it will invest even more heavily in that capability in coming years.

Cool, except that creating special operations troops is not just a matter of “Investment”.  You can’t create them with money.  You have to start with troops – traditionally people from the infantry and airborne, although they come from all corners of all services today – who learn the basics of being a soldier (or sailor, or airman, or Marine).  Then, the ones that have the urge to try will audition – and, mostly, fail – less than half of those who try to get into the Rangers succeed; the even-more-selective elite-of-the-elite units like the US Special Forces (“Green Berets”), SEALs and “Detlas” are vastly more selective; from6-12% of those who try out make the cut over a training-and-selection regimen that runs two solid years and change…

…and starts with people who are already proficient at soldiering; you don’t enlist to be a SEAL or a Green Beret or a Delta; you make your bones as a highly-competent infantryman or tanker or gunners mate or helicopter mechanic or paratrooper or Ranger or combat engineer first; to get into “Delta”, one usually starts the selection process as a highly-regarded, supremely fit NCO, a fairly senior sergeant with the beginnings of a solid career, before even volunteering for the brutally-exclusive selection process.

And in hearing the Obama Administration’s plan, I get the impression He thinks that you create SEALs and Deltas and Green Berets and Pararescue Jumpers by throwing a lot of money at an underemployed Georgetown Public Policy grad.

As it happens, APM’s “Public Insight Network” is asking about the same bit fof the State of the Union that stuck in my craw the other night.

In his State of the Union Address to Congress, President Obama talked about what he called “the basic American promise” — that if people worked hard, they could afford a home, college for their kids and some savings for retirement.

Is that still YOUR expectation of America?

They’ve put it in the form of a survey question.

My answer went a little something like this:  It’s one of the questions that defines the difference between conservatives and liberals.

In my world, America isn’t defined by our government or any material possessions or financial status symbols.  It’s about opportunity and liberty; the opportunity to succeed by dint of my merits and talents (or fail through the lack of them).

My “expectation of America” is that the government that I elect will shut up and get out of the way and let private enterprise – me – take care of things.

That pretty much covers it!

I can remember a time when Soldier Of Fortune might have run a piece on a latte-drinking liberal woman, scared by some close calls with crime opted to buy a gun:

More than once [while living in Los Angeles] I called 911. What’s bizarre is that during those nights I never remembered the gun. I didn’t even know where R. stored it. It never occurred to me that a gun might quiet my blaring inner alarms.

Until last year, that is, when I moved to Montana to live with my new boyfriend, now fiancé. Montana is one of only 12 states that allow residents to carry a loaded gun in public—“open carry”—either on foot or in a vehicle, without a permit. (To carry a concealed weapon, you do need a permit, obtainable after completing a training or safety course.)

Firearms, in other words, are a seamless part of the culture here. I don’t see people examining fruit in the produce aisle at Albertsons with a gun in plain sight, but I have glimpsed quite a few guns idly resting, like a map or some other quotidian object, on the dashboard of a car. People also talk about guns casually and often, the way people in New York talk about long workdays and people in L.A. talk about yoga classes. My boyfriend’s father’s girlfriend, a sixtysomething former stewardess who lives in Jackson Hole, tells me she keeps a pistol in her car because she often drives long stretches, crisscrossing her way between Wyoming and Arizona. Another woman I befriended, a quirky, devoutly Christian two-time divorcée in her fifties, takes her teenage son to the shooting range on weekends instead of to the movies. Leaving a sporting-goods store one evening, I pass a young couple with a yellow Labrador. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” squeals the woman, who has frosted pink lipstick and a blond ponytail snaking down her back. “This is for my birthday, right?” She’s carrying a large box containing a shotgun. As Lindsay McCrum, a photographer who published the bluntly titled book Chicks With Guns, has said: “When you get outside of the blue-state cities, everybody has a gun.”

But that’s not Soldier Of Fortune  It’s Elle. And I can not remember a time when Elle would have done anything but sniff with horror at the thought.

The other day, Sally Jo Sorenson at snarkblog Blue Stem Prairie wrote:

Just this morning Bluestem observed that we simply can’t make this stuff up about the Republican Party of Minnesota when it comes to scandal and mayhem.

And if she could make stuff up, she’d be writing for Cucking Stool.

But I digress:

Tonight on 45 Local News’ 9:00 p.m. broadcast, Jay Kolls reported that Representative Steve Smith had an “inappropriate relatioship” with a staffer, who was reassigned to a different area of the House, before leaving employment at the chamber. The report is the be expanded on KSTP 5 at 10.

Well, here’s hoping the good, conservative citizens of Mound toss his ass and replace him with someone better.  Smith is an adequate Republican; his Taxpayers League score is on the low end of the GOP average; Mound can elect better.

But Smith has been standing smack in the face of shared-parenting legislation in the House for years.  Provided he’s replaced by a conservative Republican, I wouldn’t shed a tear if he was disappeared from the House this fall.  He’s been playing into the hands and filling the coffers of the Wahhabi Feminists for way too long.

On the first weekend in March, in about six weeks, the Northern Alliance Radio Network will celebrate its’ eighth anniversary on the air.

Not to be un-Scandinavian-ly immodest, but we’ve built quite a franchise; we dominate Twin Cities weekend talk radio ratings against much bigger stations with much stronger signals, we have become appointment radio for regional conservatives, and if there’s a local Twin Cities talk show with a bigger national footprint, I’m darned if I can think of who it is.  There’s a reason Salem Twin Cities keeps us on the air, and it’s not just because they’re nice guys.

Now, the NARN has always been run by conservative bloggers.  And if there’s anything conservative bloggers have in common, it’s the fact that we come  to mock, taunt, often clobber and, at least rhetorically, bury the mainstream media.   Not, as a rule, to praise it, much less seek their recognition or approval.  Most of us would rather be approved of by used car salespeople – and, indeed, having run a dozen or so remote broadcasts from Paul Ruben’s White Bear Lake Superstore, that is emphatically, literally true for us on the NARN.

So it’s not like we expect the NARN, no matter how successful we get, to ever break the wall at most regional mainstream media; the MSM’s policy has always been to ignore the alt-media until they need to attack it.  And, true to form, the few mentions we’ve gotten have usually been for cases where one or another of us has broken with GOP or conservative orthodoxy in a way that someone or other in the MSM thinks, I suspect, will weaken the conservative coalition, which certainly doesn’t happen often.

So I think we are, as a rule, perfectly happy to work in the Twin Cities media’s shadows, reaching our audience, kicking butt.  We fight way above our weight; we’ve interviewed  Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, Governors Pawlenty and Walker, Senator Coleman and Grams, Representatives Gutknecht, Kline, Ramstad, Paulsen, Bachmann (also a prez candidate), Mayor Rybak, and too many Senate, Congressional, State Office, legislative and local candidates to even mention, to say nothing of a dizzying array of authors, cultural figures and others, ranging from Ann Coulter to MST3K’s Mike Nelson.

Just saying – we do pretty well without any fawning media coverage.

Which is good, because the regional media has to save all that obsessive fawning for coverage any time an establishment/liberal media figure burps after eating a burrito.

Case in point:  Does anyone remember Jack Rice?  I do, sorta – he was on WCCO for  a while.

Anyone remember WCCO?  I do – sorta.

Rice used to do a show on WCCO.  He was sort of a symbol of how far the station had fallen, about ten years ago.  Beyond that, I don’t know much, because not being 75 and with the Twins and Vikes having long moved elsewhere, I haven’t  spun my dial to 830 for anything but Mischke in a good five years, now.

Anyway, the MinnPost’s David Brauer breathlessly reports that Rice has found a new broadcast home – KTNF.

Does anyone remember KTNF?  It’s the local “progressive” station.  The Northern Alliance Radio Network, on Saturdays, has far more people tuned in than KTNF’s weekday morning drive show, and that doesn’t even count our web stream.    It used to be the Twin Cities Air America station…

…er, does anyone rememberr Air America?

Anyway, Brauer reminds us (with emphasis added by me):

Fans of Jack Rice, the “journalist, lawyer, former CIA officer” and ex-WCCO radio host, should mark their calendars for Feb. 5, when his new 7-9 a.m. Sunday show debuts on AM950.

Hm.  Sounds like appointment radio to me.

Brauer contends…:

AM950’s ratings are a blip (a half-percent of local listeners) and Sundays aren’t exactly prime time, but Rice has led an interesting life and he might spice up your weekend listening when “Weekend Edition” is just too patrician.

And what kind of “spice” can you expect at 7AM on Sunday?

 Says Rice, “I expect my show to be quite different than what I did on WCCO for some five years … Regarding my political approach, I intend to be fair and factual. Of course, I will state my own opinions which I will argue are based upon logical conclusions. So . . . in short, I will be subjective.”

Which is, of course, a novel idea, especially on a station featuring Fast Eddie Schultz.

Oh, what the hell.  More local radio is a good thing.  G’luck, Mr. Rice.  Bring coffee.

You may be in an out-of-the-way slot, but the MinnPost will be there to remind us how vital you are to our political conversation.

Michele Bachmann, the bete noir of the entire regional Bachmann-deranged left, freshly retired from the presidential campaign trail, has announced she’s going to go for term number four.

Bachmann declared her plans in an interview with The Associated Press. The Republican congresswoman had been mum on her plans since folding her presidential campaign after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses earlier this month.

“I’m looking forward to coming back and bringing a strong, powerful voice to Washington, D.C.,” Bachmann said.

This is a very good thing.  While there’s been speculation that Bachmann could find herself lumped into a district with Betty McCollum (DFL – La La Land), the judges who are running the redistricting process pretty soundly rejected the DFL reasoning that’d have led to such a map.  We’re over a month away from seeing our new districts – but the Sixth looks likely to remain solidly conservative.  If reason prevails in the redistricting process, I suspect Bachmann will win by something close to ten points…

…which will send her back to DC a much more powerful legislator, a legitimate leader in a GOP caucus that seems likely at this remove to be larger and more conservative. than the current one.

Which is good for the Sixth and for Minnesota – and for conservatism and, ergo, America.

It’ll also leave the impotent shriekers of the regional Bachmann Derangement industry with something to spend their boundless, manic energy on – which makes for great entertainment for conservative bloggers, and not much more.

Anyway – good call, Rep. Bachmann.  Glad to see you back in the race.

Joe Doakes of Como Park covers some familiar territory:

The Met Council announced it wants to spend $32 million to build light rail and low income housing along transit lines, because they believe the population is changing to more seniors, minorities and smaller households so these projects are not only necessary, but wise.

That’s precisely the wrong approach. Instead, they should put smaller busses on the routes and vary the number by ridership (more during rush hour, fewer mid-day). They should work with cities to strip down housing codes so foreclosed properties can be resold cheaply as starter homes.

But the infallible alliance of government and its non-profit hangers-on has decided that’s what it needs; “low income housing” and hideously expensive rail transit!

Doaks touches on something that hit a little close to home:

Example: in 2007, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and the Greater Frogtown Community Development Corporation built Dale Street Townhouses, a 16-unit row house fronting on Dale Street near Thomas Avenue, five blocks North of the light rail station to be built on University Avenue. It’s supposedly “affordable housing” but a neighbor told me yesterday there are unsold units because the asking price per apartment is well over $100,000. And that’s the subsidized price for low-income applicants who qualify, that’s not the cost of building the unit. For the same money, they could have bought twice as many foreclosed homes, slapped a coat of paint on them and resold the houses to struggling families who then could have built their own sweat equity.

I worked on those houses, when I did “Habitat” for a local company, back in 2008.  The townhouses – basically stacked-up rowhouses – cost waaaay more than $100,000 to build, even with all the freebie labor.  And this was right after St. Paul passed its idiotic vacant building ordinance, which on the one hand ensured a glut of vacant buildings ensuring all of our houses’ values would plummet without cease, and on the other hand made it virtually impossible to put most of those homes on the market without an absurd amount of expensive repairs.

And I asked the Habitat guy – a supremely earnest young guy – what sense it made to be spending this kind of money on a building like this in a city clogged with vacant buildings.

He just shrugged.  It was above his pay grade.

The Met Council’s plan is precisely the same plan they’ve always had – to create a densely populated urban center to mimic New York City, whether the population wants it or not. Theirs should be the first budget slashed when the Legislature reconvenes.

It’s got my vote.

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Are your children going to be better, paying off fifteen trillion in debt (and counting)?

Your grandchidren?

Don’t be an idiot.  Of course you’re not doing better now than you were four years ago.  One out of eight Americans who want to work can’t find a job – so even if you have a job, and have managed to improve your outlook, you are going to be pulling the cart, on the job and at tax time, for everyone else.

We’re not a foodstamp nation; most of the nation still has a strong work ethic.  And our Administration is counting on that – for just enough of us to keep pulling.

We’re a sled dog nation.  And Barack Obama is the musher.

Last night’s message; Mush.