There are quite a few fake Minnesota IDs out there:

23,705 cases of possible fraud to be exact.

People like Pedro Chavez, aka Jose Cisneros, or Carlos Santiago, or Antonia Ledesma — four separate Minnesota driver’s licenses.

Detectives say the Albert Lea man was illegally collecting welfare for a decade, using real Minnesota driver’s licenses obtained with phony documents. He was convicted of forgery, and deported.

“Is it a fraudulent birth certificate, is it a fake DL from another state?” Neville said. “Yes in all those cases as well as taking someone else’s documentation and presenting it as their own.”

And who, pray tell,m is on the case? (Emphasis added):

 Of these 24,000 driver’s licenses, about 10,000 have been canceled. Beyond that, not much else has been done. Not a single name has been given yet to the Department of Human Services to check for welfare or food stamp fraud, and no names have been given or the Secretary of State to check against the voter rolls.

Make sure you brought quarters for the meter.  Mark Ritchie’s office is too busy editing the legislature’s copy.

Leave aside the obvious conspiracy theory – that Ritchie wants to debase the driver’s license as a standard for identification in the run-up to a probable victory for the Voter ID amendment; while the vast majority of the fake IDs were no doubt taken out in the interest of some sort of personal or financial fraud, you can bet that nine out of ten of the criminals who vote, vote DFL.

And that’s the last thing Mark Ritchie wants to upset.

In my never-ending quest for new music, I’ve been trawling through the seventies.

And finding some interesting stuff.

For example – I’ve always known Stevie Wonder was an amazingly talented guy.  A top-notch multi-instrumentalist and one of Motown’s greatest talents from the sixties to the eighties, and – this is rare – an artist whose “mega-sales” period came after he’d been an artistic trailblazer for a couple of decades, he’s one of those musicians who I just know I’m supposed to like.

As, indeed, I do – having worked at a slew of oldies stations during my radio career, I always liked his Motown output, as well as his stuff from the early to mid seventies – at least, the stuff that made it on the radio.   And that’s all notwithstanding the fact that by the time I discovered him he was well into the least interesting but by far most profitable part of his career – his “Ebony and Ivory” / “That’s What Friends Are For” / “Part Time Lover” phase of his career.

So poking around the web the other day, I found this; a mini concern from French TV from 1974, when Wonder was 24 and had already been a star half his life.  It bounces around through a bunch of styles, jams a lot, and is…

…well, just listen.

By the way – the black guy with the Les Paul?  That’;s Ray “Who Ya Gonna Call?” Parker, Junior.

Needles found in turkey sandwiches on Delta flights from Amsterdam.

Not-very-reassuring thing #1:

“TSA continues to closely monitor the review of the incidents as well as the security protocols being conducted by the air carrier and the airport authority,” spokesman David Castelveter said.

And not-so-reassuring thing #2:

“Delta requires all its in-flight caterers to adhere to strict criteria in order to offer our customers the very best onboard meals,” Baur told CNN in a statement. “The safety and security of our passengers and crew is Delta’s number one priority.”

So the bad news:  Delta and TSA are on the case.  And if cases can be solved by being late or groping peoples’ nether regions, we’re gold.

The good news?  To the best of my knowledge, Al Quaeda hasn’t figured out how to fit a bomb inside a needle yet.

And I’ll just shut up right now.

1. Airport Security

2. Beachwear:

The rumor is buzzing that Romney “may have picked a running mate”.

I personally expect that Romney, if he’s smart, will keep the media nipping at the bait for the next month, ’til the convention.  Or so I hope.

Given a choice between Palwenty, Jindal, Portman or Rice, it’d be a tough call for me.  I’d be most excited with a Jindal pick, but I could be persuaded any of those directions.

But one thing that does not excite me is some of the chatter from a few Minnesota paleocons over the weekend, saying if Pawlenty were the pick they’d forget about voting for Mitt.

Word to the wise; if Obama wins re-election because Romney lost Minnesota by two votes, I’ll be sending you the bill for my Obamacare tax hike.

So I told someone I spent some time talking with Tom Emmer on Saturday.

“Oh”, said the person I was talking to, “he’s the guy on those billboards with the guy who looks like David Byrne or Ric Ocasek…”

Read this excellent piece in the PiPress and figure it out for yourselves.

It does not look good.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

See, this is why I hate lawyers who write social commentary:. They commit the most obvious logical fallacy and expect us to ignore the error but genuflect to their credentials.

“As leaders of law firms, we write in our individual capacity.” What the Hell does that mean? Does that mean “Every lawyer in the entire Big Shot law firm opposes . . . “ or does it mean “Some guys who work at the Big Shot law firms oppose . . . ?” Clearly, “individual” means NOT on behalf of the firms; they’re writing as individual lawyers like any of 35,000 other lawyers in Minnesota.

But they’re lawyers and it’s a legal issue, doesn’t that add weight to their opinions? But it’s not a legal issue. If it were, the matter would be settled in court where lawyers’ opinions might matter. This is a legislative issue to be settled in the ballot box, an issue on which the opinions of every citizen are equally valid. Lawyers – even those at big law firms – get one vote each, same as the rest of us. Their law licenses adds no weight to their opinions.

But they work at Big Shot law firms, doesn’t that add weight to their opinions? No, it means for 20 years of schooling they were the most outstanding test-takers, brown-nosers, box-checkers and teacher’s-opinion-regurgitators so they got better grades and therefore got hired by big name firms. They may have higher IQs than you and I, but this isn’t an IQ test so that doesn’t make their opinions more valuable than ours. The firm name adds no weight to the writers’ opinions.

But they’re the managing partners, the guys who run the firms. They manage dozens, maybe hundreds of employees, doesn’t that add weight? Why should the individual personal opinion of the managing partner at Big Shot law firm on a social issue be entitled to more weight than the managing archbishop of the local diocese or the manager of the local road construction company? Why should the manager’s opinion on a social issue be entitled to more weight than the employees’ opinions? Just because you’re management instead of labor doesn’t give you any special insight into how basic societal units should be structured, whether “family” should be one-man-one-woman, same sex, or plural. No, being the managing partners adds no weight to their opinions.

“Appeal to Authority” is a fundamental logical fallacy and they commit it in the very first sentence of the column. Their opinions have no more weight than mine and “Because I said so” quit working when I was 5 years old. With that poison opener, the rest of the column doesn’t stand a chance of persuading me these writers have the authority to instruct me how I should vote on this issue. I’ll make up my own mind, thank you very much.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

RIght.  But Democrats, being fundamentally hive creatures, tend to defer to authority first, and ask questions later.

As we saw during the whole stadium fracas, the Ramsey County Commission is as spendthrift a body as exists anywhere in Minnesota politics; but for the fact that it lacks the clout on Capitol Hill that the Downtown Minneapolis Brotherhood musters, the citizens of RamCo could be stuck with the tab for Zygi’s Playhouse.

And so we need some new blood on the Ramco Commission.

Sue Jeffers is holding a fundraiser tonight at the Blair House (Selby and Western in Saint Paul).  It’s going to feature appearances by Bob Davis and Tom Emmer from some inferior talk station.  You can register in advance (or just leave a donation if you can’t attend) if you’d like!

By the way, out on the East Side Dennis Dunnigan is running a very good campaign for Commissioner as well.  This is a very winnable seat.  If you can help him with time or money, by all means do.

The Berg Institute – the nation’s foremost think tank on public safety and social policy [1] – is announcing a brand new program; the Politician Buy-Back!

Today only, please bring any politicians you’d like to get off the street down to the Shot In The Dark comment center.  Toss ’em in the box – in the comment section – no questions asked.  In exchange, you get a Mastercarp card good for $100 [2].

So bring your politicians down and make our streets that much safer!

Thanks to Berg Institute Senior Fellow Kermit for the idea.

(more…)

The DFL treats a lot of constituencies like serfs – which is a polite word for “slaves”, although there’s usually not an actual title transfer on the humans involved.

Name ’em – women, blacks, Latinos, Gays, Asians, the DFL expects to get all their votes, in exchange for doing nothing of use for them except try to crank up social spending.

Among them we have to add Private-Sector Unions.  Unlike the government employee unions, AFSCME and MAPE and EdMinn and the SEIU, the private sector unions have to work within the free market to keep working.

And DFL rule is disastrous for them.

Nowhere moreso than in the 8th CD, where the economic slump has hit, as usual, hardest, in what was a former DFL sinecure.  The hits keep coming, of course – the DFL’s environmental lobby – anaemic on the Iron Range, but big and powerful in the Twin Cities – has worked tirelessly to shut down the mining industry and to try to keep it shut down.

But in 2010, Chip Cravaack shocked the world – bringing the hope of some free market reforms, and more importantly jobs, to the Range and the Arrowhead.  Cravaack tipped Jim Oberstar in a hard-fought campaign for a seat that had been held by Democrats continuously since the Truman Administration.

The DFL is telling themselves they smell flip-back.  But Iron Rangers are not better off than they were four years ago – and despite Cravaack’s tireless efforts, the environmental lobby, hooked in as they are with the interventionist Obama and Dayton regulatory sledgehammers, the EPA and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, wants to keep them that way.  Poor, broke and dependent.

The first union has had enough:

The International Union of Operating Engineers announced that it supports GOP Rep. Chip Cravaack’s reelection bid. The move will allow Cravaack to note on signs, in ads and in campaign lit that he’s “Labor Endorsed” in a union friendly district.

The IUOE – better known as “The 49ers” – are a huge force in the district.  And this is an upset; they endorsed Oberstar two years ago:

Earlier this week, the union held open meetings for members in the 8th District to hear from Cravaack and the three DFLers looking to replace him. After meeting with the candidates, “the strong majority voted to endorse Congressman Chip Cravaack,” according to a statement from the union.

Sources familiar with the election say it wasn’t even close – like, 60-40.

Specifically, the union applauded Cravaack for voting against several attempts to dial back prevailing wage laws, as well as his support for construction projects such as the Keystone Pipeline, the Polymet mining project and a new St. Croix River bridge.

“When we took a look at Congressman Cravaack’s term in office, it became clear that he has done a good job of staying away from partisan Washington politics, and really focusing on bread and butter issues that are important to construction workers in his district,” the group said in a statement. “He is not afraid to stand up to his party when he disagrees with their direction, and his votes reflect that.”

If you’re a member of a private sector union, ask yourself – are you better off than you were four years ago?  And if not, how is your union remaining devoted to Barack Obama and the DFL helping you?

It’s not.

You’re just a serf; you’re a source of union dues, and a biennial vote. ;

After fighting against a full-court regulatory press by the City of Saint Paul for months and months, yet another entrepreneur – from that hive of business-friendliness, MInne-freaking-apolis – has opted to cut his losses.

Joe Doakes writes:

The City fought them long enough, they gave up and went away. Thank Thune we kept that Bad business off Grand Avenue. Now there’s room for a Good business, something that sells hand-dipped candles, maybe. Or maybe mystic crystals and wind chimes. To pedestrians or bicyclists.

Joe has too much faith.  In most parts of St. Paul, it’d be some kind of city-funded non-profit.  But on Grand Avenue, it’ll be a chain.  No, not a plebeian chain like Chipotle; not a local chain like Pineda.  No, it’ll be some national, fashionably-PC, high-end place like Patagonia, with the self-righteous cachet to overcome most of the objections and the money to beat the rest.

That’s what this City needs more of, good businesses like that.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Hey, we can take our train to Minneapolis for cupcakes!

In a couple of years.

“So why do you spend so much time on the Second Amendment? Are you (titter, titter) compensating for something?”

Yes. I’m compensating for the fact that much of humanity is evil, and much of the rest of them are as dumb as you. No, I’m not saying you’re party to totalitarian dictatorship; merely that dictators need people like you to be in the majority for them to take power.

Shut up, watch and learn.

Here’s some news we Real Americans can use:

A Downstate [Illinois] pro-gun group says it turned payouts from Chicago’s firearm buyback program last weekend into a fund-raiser for a youth summer camp — a National Rifle Association shooting camp, that is.

The city collected 5,500 guns last Saturday in the annual buyback. The city gave out $100 MasterCard gift cards for each gun and $10 cards for BB guns and replicas.

Among the guns turned in under the “no questions asked” policy, beyond any doubt, were many used in street crimes that will now, no doubt, be that much harder to investigate.  Thanks, orcs!

But the good guys got their licks in:

Sixty of the guns and several BB guns were turned in by the Champaign-based Guns Save Life. In return, the group received $6,240 in gift cards, said John Boch, president of the group…Most of the money will go toward buying ammunition for an NRA youth camp in Bloomington. The rest will pay for four bolt-action rifles that will be given away to campers.

Unlike many of the guns in Chicago, the group’s guns were mostly an effort in metal recycling – with an edge (emphasis added):

“This was rusty, non-firing junk that we turned in,” Boch said. “We are redirecting funds from people who would work against the private ownership of firearms to help introduce the next generation to shooting safely and responsibly.”

Proof that Chicago hates the law-abiding gun owner more than the criminals (who, let’s be honest, are at some level a Democrat constituency)?

Despite the no-questions-asked policy of the buyback, police officials asked Guns Save Life members where they got their guns, Boch said. Still, the police officials allowed them to turn in their guns, he said.

All in all, this is brilliant stuff; robbing (legally) from the orcs to pay for freedom:

Todd Vandermyde, the NRA’s chief lobbyist in Illinois, said Guns Save Life turned the tables on Chicago.

“I think it’s a very good example of the resourcefulness of the pro-gun side to take the initiative to turn something used by anti-gunners into a positive,” he said.

Vandermyde said he’s heard that gun-shop owners also have used the annual gun turn-in for profit.

Vandermyde said he was told one suburban gun dealer imported junk rifles for less than $50 each and received $100 gift cards for each of them.

“It’s comical,” he said.

And for this, I salute them.

The big, dumb, orc government of Chicago is, naturally, not amused:

But the city doesn’t think so.

“We host the gun turn-in event on an annual basis to encourage residents to turn in their guns so we can take guns off the street and it’s unfortunate that this group is abusing a program intended to increase the safety of our communities,” said Melissa Stratton, a police spokeswoman.

Boch said he doesn’t think the crooks who have pushed the number of Chicago’s homicides to 38 percent over last year’s total are the ones handing over their weapons.

Well, not yet anyway.

And so I salute you, Guns Save Life.  As should all Real Americans.

I got this via email from a regular reader, who writes…:

Next time there is a gun buyback in town, I’m selling them the $100 Rossi combination 20ga/22lr that I bought at Dicks for a starter gun for my son. Worst gun in the world. I would never let another kid grow up shooting that piece of shit.

Let the orcs pay for your mistakes.

It’s freaking brilliant. I have an ancient, rusted, .22 single shot with a missing bolt in the basement that might be a contender for the same.

Bring on the buyback, orcs!

As we noted on Tuesday, the Strib’s coverage of the fact that over 100,000 Minnesotans have carry permits (six weeks later than it was covered in this space) had good news and bad news.

The good news?  Larry Oakes, the Strib reporter, did a decent job of finding some sources on the pro-gun side.  Like a few Strib reporters before him – Conrad DeFiebre was the first – he seems to have tried to do a fair job.

And maybe it’s that urge – and reportorial “duty” – to be fair that pushed Oakes into his mistake, and the bad news; Oakes took Heather Martens seriously.

That may be a form of “good news” in a sense; fifteen years ago, there were a couple of anti-gun groups, and a slew of Metrocrat DFL legislators who would queue up to bash on the Second Amendment and its supporters.  Now, Martens is pretty much the best anyone can manage.

And as this blog has been showing for most of the past decade, if Heather Martens says it, it’s a lie.  Or, in this classic example published by a very gullible and uninformed Minnesota Public Radio, fifteen lies in a row with barely a breath.

But here’s where it gets serious:  Oakes writes…:

State data shows that since the law took effect, permit holders were convicted of 882 non-traffic crimes, including 66 assaults, two robberies and two killings. Many were committed with guns.

I don’t know the “66 assaults” or “two robberies”; I’m going to dig into those.

I’ll show you why in a moment.  Let’s focus on the “two killings”.

I had  a hunch where the “two killings” numbers came from.  I called Mr. Oakes at the Strib.  And he confimed – he’d been pointed to the numbers at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension by Martens.

The BCA doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what killings are what – but let’s presume that the “two killings” are not the two justifiable homicides in Hennepin County over the past couple of years – the Grumpy’s shooting, where a bouncer shot and killed a patron that was threatening him (and cut him!) with a knife, and the Evanovich shooting last fall, where a good samaritan killed a mugger who’d just pistol-whipped a woman in the parking lot of a Cub foods on East Lake, and then drew on the samaritan (who shot first, taking out Evanovich and ending a bit of a crime wave on East Lake).  HenCo attorney Mike Freeman – no fan of civilians with guns – ruled both of those shootings justifiable.  So those are of no use to Heather Martens or any anti-gunny.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, other than these two, there have been two other shootings involving carry permittees, and the BCA records seem to line up with them.

The first “killing”, if my sources are correct (and they pretty much always are) was a 2010 suicide; a man in Duluth who had pled guilty a week earlier to sexual assault.

There are a couple of interesting details about this case, though:

• For starters, his permit should have been yanked when he pled guilty – in court, that moment – if not when he was arrested for felony sexual assault.  So if the man – Brock McCarthy was his name – ever had a permit, he shouldn’t have when he killed himself.  That’s if the system worked as it is supposed to.
• He shot himself in his home.  His permit was irrelevant.
• It was a suicide.  Not a murder.  While suicide is a tragedy (that, in this case, was connected to another awful crime), it’s different than killing a second or third party who doesn’t want to get killed.

While suicide is a tragedy, one needn’t have a carry permit – or a gun – to do it. People without permits – or guns – do it all the time.  The only difference with gun suicides is that it’s rarely about “seeking attention”, like cutting one’s wrists or taking pills. It’s about wanting to check out, now. Tragic? Sure. A rap on carry permits? Nope. Fishy to present as a “killing”, in the sense of a person killing another person?

Absoflutely.

The second killing was one Michelle Rae Wilson, who killed her boyfriend in 2008 in St. Paul.  Wilson was convicted of second-degree murder.  I’m familiar with the case; my friend the late Joel Rosenberg covered it extensively.  It was a fair cop.   It was also in her home – the carry permit was irrelevant.

(On the off-chance that the other homicide was the shooting at Nye’s back in 2005?  The permit-holder was using a pre-“Shall-Issue” permit, one of the ones issued with the full police discretion that, Heather Martens would have you believe, made them safer than the ones we’ve had for the past nine years).

Martens’ point was to try to impugn carry permittees – as Oakes’ next quote made clear:

Martens said it debunks the notion that all permit holders are law-abiding.

Let’s shoot that strawman in the face.  Nobody said “all” permittees were law-abiding.  Merely much more law-abiding than the general public.

As Oakes, to his credit, allows Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance boss Andrew Rothman to note:

Rothman responded that permit holders commit much less than their share of crime, citing as an example that though one in seven Minnesotans has a DWI on their record, only one in 545 of the state’s permit holders got one after getting a permit.

“No one ever claimed permit holders would be perfect,” Rothman said, “but the numbers show (they) are consistently orders of magnitude more law abiding than the general public.”

Indeed, as we’ve shown in this space, even in a bad year, carry permittees are a couple of orders of magnitude safer than the general public.

Let’s look at Minnesota statistics.  Leaving out the two justifiable homicides and the suicide, there has been one unjustified murder carried out by someone who had a carry permit in 10 years.   There are over 100,000 carry permittees.  Divided over ten years, that yields a murder rate of .1 per 100,000.  The murder rate in Minnesota averages around 2/100,000.  Carry permittees are 20 times safer than the general public.  So far.

And in terms of danger to the public?  From 2003-2010, there were 1107 murders in Minnesota (give or take a few – I did the math in my head).  That’s an annual murder rate of about 2 per 100,000.  Against that, we have one non-justifiable homicide carried out by a permit-holder.  That boils down to an annual rate of .002/100,000, meaning a typical citizen is just shy of three orders of magnitude less likely to be murdered (unjustifiably, anyway) by a carry permittee than by a non-permittee.

We’ll look into the “robberies” and “assaults” later.

Whatever the overall affect on society, Easton, the Twin Cities gun instructor, said he thinks that carrying has made him a safer member of it by giving him what he perceives to be “a sense of grace.”

“When you’re carrying a gun, you can’t afford to get accused of causing trouble, so you let things roll off your back,” he said. “You wave with all five fingers.”

Very, very true.

So there are two lessons from Larry Oakes’ story:

• The Strib is making an effort to cover the issue relatively fairly.
• On the other hand, if Heather Martens opens her mouth, she’s lying.

I think that sums it up well.

…it’s the liberals who are the smart, open-minded, non-depraved ones:

Jane Pitt, mother of actor Brad Pitt, has been scared into silence by the hate-filled, vulgar and even violent reaction to her public assertion that Barack Obama is “a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage.”

Pitt has even been the subject of death threats following her letter to the editor of Missouri’s Springfield News-Leader in which she asserted failure to vote for Republican presumptive presidential candidate Mitt Romney constituted a vote for Obama.

Because free speech is only for liberals in Hollywood.

Big question:  will smarmy liberal Pitt defend his mother?

And with all the prelims out of the way, we’re up to the grand finale of this, one of Minnesota Politics’ greatest traditions; the top ten conservatives that Minnesota liberals hate!

And here we go:

10. Laura Brod (2010 Ranking: 14): Brod – a former legislator, and one of the sharpest, most articulate politicians in the state, is lurking in the wings for her shot at something.  And when she does, she’s going to rock the place.  And when conservative women are about to rock, liberals salute them – with boundless,  condescending, sometimes unhinged ire.

9. John Kline (2010 Ranking: 15):  Redistricting has cut John Kline’s fortunes back a tad.  Instead of winning the 2nd CD by 30 points, he’ll win by 12.  It was only 12 years or so ago that the 2nd was Tim Penny’s safe sinecure.  And in Minnesota, only Liberals are supposed to have sinecures.

7. Keith Downey: Downey’s a fairly junior legislator – but during the shutdown, he made “Govenor” Dayton look like the gabbling marionette he is.  As his nominator, my staff blogger First Ringer, noted, “During the shutdown, the unions called their protests “Downeyville.” Not bad for a 2nd term legislator. Expect his name to rocket up this list if he runs for governor in 2014 as expected”. No argument here.

8. Kurt Zellers: Speaker of the House – what some DFLers call “The Kelliher Seat”.  And he’s Conservative.  Say no more.

6. Erik Paulsen (2010 Ranking: 21):  What do you call someone who took a “purple” district and rode it into one of the safest GOP seats in the state?  Hated!  But nothing like…

5. Chip Cravaack:  …someone who “steals” one of “their” safest sinecures from them. The DFL wants Cravaack defeated more than they want tofu at Festivus.  By far the strongest debut in this year’s poll, from nowhere (naturally – when the 2010 poll was going on, nobody had heard of Cravaack, even in the GOP, outside the 8th CD).

4. Jason Lewis (2010 Ranking: 7):  Lewis, perhaps more than any other pundit, upset the “great thing” the DFL had going for so many years.  He’s the father of modern conservatism in Minnesota – and clearly that’s neither been forgotten nor forgiven.

3. Tom Emmer (2010 Ranking: 3):  They had to outspend him 3:1 to beat him by 8,000 votes, even with a dysfunctional GOP behind him.  In so doing, they so exposed the incompetence and (likely) massive fraud in the DFL-controlled voting system that it set the wheels in motion to reform the entire toxic mess.  And Tom is still kicking their asses.  No wonder he’s holding steady at #3.

2. Katherine Kersten (2010 Ranking: 4): Liberals love their women to be the PC equivalent of barefoot, preggers and in the kitchen.  Kersten broke the Blue Ceiling at the Strib – the first columnist to be an “Out” conservative, in a bullpen that has always called Dave Durenberger a right-winger.  She rankled the establishment at the Strib, and in Twin CIties liberalism at large.  They hate being rankled.

1. Michele Bachmann (2010 Ranking: 1):  Not even close.  More votes than the next two finishers put together.  Not only that, but of everyone that voted for her, all but one put her in first place – for a passion index a point and a half higher than the next competitor.  Representative Bachmann is the perfect bete noir storm; sharp, articulate (if occasionally a bit shoot-from-the-hip), attractive, female, paleoconservative, charismatic, smarter than they are (whether they admit it or not), and absolute master of all she politically surveys.  By holding, Thatcher-like, to rock-solid principle, she was a bright spot in two dark GOP elections; she’s persevered to win her last race by 12 points, and likely win her next one by 20.  And if there’s anything a Minnesota liberal hates more than a conservative woman, it’s a conservative woman who walks over them without breaking a sweat at their most depraved attacks.  More than that?  Their hatred only seems to make her stronger.

And in being so, she teaches all conservatives in this purple miasma a lesson; stake out your principles, explain them clearly, and stand by ’em.

And in that lies the doom of the DFL, if there is any future to be had for this state.

And they do very very much hate that.

———-

Thanks for voting, and stay tuned; we’ve only two years away from the next episode of “Who Do Minnesota Liberals Hate?”

Mitt Romney, after weighing risks (including taxes) and returns, opting to put money in a Swiss bank account: The biggest crisis they can gin up to draw attentio away from the Obama depression for now ever. and a sign of disloyalty and lack of faith in his nation!

Mark Dayton, after weighing the risks (including taxes) and returns, opting to stash money in a “Dynasty” trust in low-tax South Dakota: “Hey, a guy’s got a right to watch out for his nest egg!”

All right.  Yesterday we got through the nominees and the finishers from 21 through 37 in the rankings.

This morning, we’re up to the first half of the Top Twenty!

20. Ed Morrissey (2010 Ranking 10):  The Hot Air proprietor, and my long-time radio co-host, slides ten spots since 2010.  Liberals’ hate seems to be more closely focused on policymakers than pundits these days.

19. Bob Davis: On the other hand, Bob Davis’ return to Twin Cities radio also marks his debut on the list.

18. Sue Jeffers: Is it because she’s a conservative talk-radio playa?  Or because she’s a GOP candidate (for Ramco Commission) and activist?  Or because she’s an outspoken female conservative?  Why choose!  Libs hate her!

17. Chris Fields: If there’s anything a lib hates more than a “Minority” who’s not sitting obediently on the DFL bus, it’s one who, rhetorically, shreds his DFL opponent in every way but fundraising.

16. Mitch Berg (2010 Ranking 8 ):  Even though I slide eight spots – what a wonderful country this is!  Where a regular schlump working stiff with a blog can be the 16th-most-hated conservative in town!

15. Tea Party (2010 Ranking 24):  The libs have spent the past three years flip-flopping between “The Tea Party is Dead!” and “The Tea Party Is Too Powerful!”.  Time to flop, apparently.

14. Dan McGrath / MN Majority: The driving force behind the bipartisan Voter ID amendment, MN Majority and Dan McGrath, leapt into the top 20 this year.  If Mark Ritchie were doing the counting, he’d have won by thousands, though.

13. Dave Thompson: The former talk host and leader of the Senate’s “I Don’t Give A Rat’s Ass If The Strib Editorial Board Doesn’t Approve” caucus would seem to be at the beginning of a long career as the object of liberal hate.

12. Mary Franson: Female?  Check.  Conservative?  Check.  Shred the Dems when they convicted her in rhetorical Kangaroo Court?  Check.  Representative Franson didn’t have the highest debut, but it was close.

11. Tim Pawlenty (2010 Ranking 2):  Falling from 2 to 11, former Governor Pawlenty will no doubt leap to the top of the charts if he’s selected for VP.

Noon today:  The Top Ten Titans Of Liberal Ire.

Back during the glory days of Fairness-Doctrine trial-balloonery from Obama and the Democrats, the President’s apologists liked to claim that “the President wasn’t going to push the doctrine”.

To which those of us who knew the issue replied “He, President Obama himself, does not need to do it himself.  He’s got his choice of FCC administrators or Congress to do it for him”.

Anyway, in recent weeks the subject’s turned to gun control.  Some lefties have claimed that “Fast and Furious” was not an attempt to used the ful weight and power of the federal government to slander the law-abiding gun owner; it’s risible, but it’s a point to debate.

But that usually gets followed up with a “President Obama hasn’t done anything to attack the Second Amendment, and he’s not going to”.

Which is wrong on one count – he was on the board of the Joyce Foundation, which actively funds anti-Second-Amendment groups – and he really doesn’t have to do it himself.  Congress may be smarter (or more afraid of the NRA) than that, of course…

…but the UN is not.

Obama’s administration, picking winners and losers yet again, destroys even more (outré, déclassé) entrepreneurship.

Although to be fair, this time he didn’t need John Roberts to do it.

I must confess, I’ve more or less gotten over trying to each leftybloggers how logic works, except in the odd individual case (and I have to admit that’s more a matter of rhetorical endzone-ball-spiking, bordering on intellectual sadomasochism, than actual interest in education).

I say that partly because today’s subject isn’t a blogger (although he certainly packs the intellectual gear to  be a Twin Cities leftyblogger), and partly because, well, I’m at that stage of my life when I question a lot of my own motivations, and sometimes find my answers sorely wanting.

Not as wanting as I find my opponents, naturally.

Like most conservatives, I’ve long since given up reading the Star/Tribune for anything other than material to mock.

And as that last that last weekend’s “Counterpoint” – “Liberals are Right, Conservatives are Wrong“, from retired math teacher David Perlman qualifies.

And today’s liberal rhetorical stunt?  The incredibly-difficult “Double Circular Question-Beg” from a Rolling Start!

The rolling start?  A smarmy dollop of that other crutch of the liberal “thinker”, smug entitlement:

In “Based on recent rulings, it’s the court’s liberal wing that’s rigid” (June 29), D.J. Tice observed that the liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court constitute a more lockstep group than the conservatives do.

I think he’s right — but Tice presented this as a criticism of the liberals.

I did say “smug entitlement”:

Here’s the arrogant part: Liberalism is correct and conservatism is wrong.

Perlman follows with some puffery that I’m sure he intends to be self-justifying – math and science are objective, doncha know! – before making with the Big Truths:

The law, unlike mathematics or science, attempts to be based on logic, but it is strongly influenced by interpretation. What, for example, is a “reasonable man”? Reasonable men can disagree.

But the “Reasonable Person” in the sense of the legal theory doesn’t actually get into arguments; it’s a standard, not an anthropological model.

But I digress – but to be fair, Perlman keeps digressing, too.

The purpose of the legal minds who sit on the Supreme Court is not so much to apply logic as it is to interpret the Constitution.

And there, I’ll let my lawyer friends have at it.

And now we come to rigid blocs and the miracle that is the Supreme Court. I can well imagine the behind-the-scenes conversations that go on among the nine justices. I envision congeniality and also heated debate, and I have come to believe that the liberals tend to sway the conservatives far more than the other way around.

And Mr. Perlman seems to have “come to believe” this in much the same way that I “came to believe” in Santa Claus when I was six; I really, really wanted to.

I am, of course, stating Mr. Perlman’s conclusion for him.  But as we read onward – and we will, damn the luck – Perlman returns the favor with noxious interest.

I’ll add emphasis here and there throughout the rest of the piece:

Justice David Souter comes to mind right away. Even Justice Sandra Day O’Connor moved to the left in the end. I think the reason is that they are all intelligent people, and intelligent people tend toward liberalism.

It’s a conceit that drives many liberals – and virtually all of them, near as I can tell, who get past high school.

Conservatives decry the liberal bias in the universities. It is true that most college professors are liberals, but I don’t think it has anything to do with bias. It is because college professors are intelligent people, and intelligent people tend to be liberal.

College is where smart people are, so liberals at college must be smart!

I have had many conversations with colleagues about why so many people vote against their own best interests, and the only conclusion that is ever reached is that those people are swayed by emotional arguments, not by intelligent thought.

Liberals are at college; smart people are at college; smart people know what’s in their best interests, and liberals are smart people, so voting liberal is in everyone’s best interest (whatever that is!)!

It’s simple!

But it’s in the next bit that Perlman shows his true mastery of the form; he not only sticks the “Double Circular Question-Beg”, he does it with style!

So, in the end, despite Citizens United, and despite Republicans’ putting extreme conservatives on the Supreme Court, the constitution of the court itself (pun intended) has a tendency to move to the left.

College is where smart people are.  Liberals are at college, so they must be smart.  Judges when to lots of college, so they are by definition smart, ergo liberal!

Why don’t all you morons understand this?  It’s as logical as any circle!

This piece is proof that:

• Minnesota Liberals never really learn how to question, much less debate, conservatism:  Growing up in a school system that trains youth to be “progressives”, coming of age in a university system that (sorry, Mr. Perlman) hangs out a “no conservatives need apply” sign, then spend decades in a system – public ed, civil service, any public employee’s union – that would never dream of second-guessing any of those preconceptions (but does have a very strict definition of “voters’ best interests”, yessirreebob) with a big helping of Minnesota-bred “we’re all strong, good looking and above average” larded on top, let’s be honest; it’d be a miracle if Mr. Perlman could be anything but smug, entitled, and not nearly as bright as he thinks.  His argument, full of circular question-begging (formidable as that is) would have embarassed a modestly bright ninth-grader when I was in school.
• The Strib is trying hard to buck up liberals’ self-esteem in what could shape up to be an awful election year for them, apparently showing them that anyone can be a Big Thinker  That, or they are almost out of commentary writers.
• American public education is screwed blue, presuming Mr. Perlman really was a teacher.

Mr. Perlman:  hang out at college some more.   You may not get any smarter, but you won’t be inflicting what passes for your “logic” on people via the Strib, anyway.

Two years ago, we had 30 nominees with a significant number of votes that we could actually rank.

This year, there were 40.

And so in this episode, I’ll give the results from 40 up to 21:

40. Bridget Sutton: The southeast metro activist, Inver Grove Heights school board member, wife of former GOP chair Tony, and potential candidate for many things, Sutton makes her first appearance on the poll.

39. Jen DeJournette: One of the heads of “VOICES of Conservative Women”, DeJournette was one of a big surge in female nominees and vote-getters.

38. Katie Kieffer (2010 Ranking 30): Kieffer, the up-and-coming conservative columnist, actually got about the same number of votes as in 2010.  The competition was just that much more intense this year.

37. Alan Quist (2010 Ranking: Nominated): Quist would probably have finished around this point in 1998, if I’d had a blog then…

36. Gretchen Hoffman: The no-nonsense – and, unfortunately, retiring – Senator from northwest Minnesota will be missed, here and especially at the Capitol.

35. Any Corporation that stands up to them: Pretty self-explanatory.

34. Sarah Palin: I did label the poll “Minnesota” conservatives – but I think this is accurate enough.

33. Michael Brodkorb (2010 Ranking 5): The former Senate Commo director, Party deputy and NARN co-host dropped sharply this year.  Liberals apparently hate him less because he’s not focusing on, and shredding, them.

32. All Female and Minority Conservatives: This may have been the overriding theme of this poll; it’s the women and the “Minorities”.

31. Scott Walker: You don’t have to be a Minnesotan for Minnesota liberals to hate you.

30. John Hinderaker (2010 Ranking 13): The acerbic Power Line blogger dropped out of the top 20 this year.

26. Tony Sutton (2010 Ranking: Nominated):  Sutton’s profile as the target of lefty ire certainly grew in the past two years.

28. Tom Hauser / KSTP TV: Hauser and The Five got some votes this year, from people who noted that Twin Cities liberals have been whining that they are “conservative flaks”.  Which is apparently a Twin Cities liberal term for “actually reports facts about Republicans”, even if they’re not unflattering.

27. Twila Brase (2010 Ranking 28): Brase – my neighbor – stays at about the same level of general loathing.  This next two years may change that.

26. Sara Anderson: The majordomo of the Republican redistricting plan was certain to be  the target of plenty of lefty animus, given the left’s propensity for attacking people when they can’t attack facts.

25. Steve Drazkowski: The Senator from southeast Minnesota certainly spent this past session fielding the brickbats.

24. Pat Garofalo: The Lakeville rep took his share of flak and then some for leading the challenge of Minnesota’s big herd of sacred cattle, Education Minnesota, and raising his hand for Minnesota taxpayers.

23. Kurt Bills: The MN Senate candidate made a strong debut showing.

22. Matt Dean: The House Majority Leader also had a strong debut.

21. Bradlee Dean (2010 Ranking 17): I’m not sure that Dean is actually hated any less; it’s just that with the Minnesota “Independent” out of business, there’s not somebody writing about him eight hours a day, every day.

We’ll have 11 through 20 tomorrow morning, and wrap up the contest with the top ten tomorrow at noon!

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel – mayor of a city that forbids gun ownership by the law-abiding and is spending millions in taxpayer money to try to find ways to flout the Supreme Court’s McDonald decision which expressly condemned Chicago’s handgun laws, and is “unexpectedly” in the middle of a wave of gang violence that has increased the city’s murder rate 30% at a time when the national murder rate has been dropping for years – is appealing to gang-bangers’ “values” to try to stem the flood of blood:

“We’ve got two gangbangers, one standing next to a kid. Get away from that kid. Take your stuff away to the alley. Don’t touch the children of the city of Chicago. Don’t get near them,” Emanuel — President Obama’s former chief of staff — told anchor Scott Pelley.

It’s…er…

…novel?

“And it is about values. As I said then [when a 7-year-old girl was shot and killed last month], who raised you? How were you raised?

Oh, that’s easy!  They were raised by single parents in a system that systematically devalues fatherhood – the institution that traditionally helps boys channel their natural aggression!  They were either raised by people who may have had values of their own once, but for whatever reason either couldn’t keep their kids – or grandkids – out of institutions that think summarily ending the lives of people who wear  your colors, or “disrespect” you, or who sell drugs on your gang’s drug turf, is a perfectly acceptable way to resolve issues…

…or by people who subscribed to those beliefs themselves.  And many to most of them were raised into a post-nineties ‘urban culture” that glorifies violence, especially violence that ends up in wealth, however transient, and a form of “honor killing” no less noxious than the most backward Wahhabi.

And I don’t buy this case where people say they don’t have values. They do have values. They have the wrong values. Don’t come near the kids — don’t touch them.”

Let me know if that works better than “no guns for you!” has been working out.

EIght young people were shot in Chicago in gang-related violence yesterday alone.

Before we get to the ranked results from the poll, I thought I’d run both a quick explanation of the mechanics of the poll, and then a look at the Minnesota conservatives and groups that got nominations, but no votes.

First;  I took the list of votes in descending order of hatred.  Votes at the top of a list got more weight than votes at the bottom.  I entered the votes and weights into a spreadsheet, tallying both number and weight of votes.  That’s how all ties were broken; a tie between two nominees with the same vote total was broken by the nominees’ “Passion Index”, or average weight per vote.  Someone who got five second-place votes would out-score someone with five tenth-place votes, for a hypothetical example, although someone with six tenth-place votes would beat someone with five first-place votes (hypothetically; it never happened).

The poll is extremely unscientific. and uses a methodology that any statistician with a yen to seek the truth giggle with derision – which means it’s the same as the Star-Tribune “Minnesota Poll” and the Humphrey Institute’s “HHH Poll”.  However, my poll is intended for entertainment, not as “journalism” (or, just as likely, an attempt to sway the vote), which gives my poll a bit of a moral and ethical advantage.

———-

The poll – and Minnesota conservatism – have changed a bit in the past two years.  Some people who placed on the poll two years ago didn’t show up at all this year: Entrepreneurs, who placed 27; Tracy Eberly, who notched a 25; Brian “Saint Paul” Ward who came in at 2; Rep. and then candidate King Banaian who eked out a 20; Phil Krinkie, who came in at 12; Carol Molnau, who finished at 11, and the biggest dropper, David Strom, who came in at sixth place two years ago.

So with that out of the way, let’s take a look at nominees who received just one vote:

Brad Carlson: The NARN’s newest co-host makes his initial appearance in the list.

John Gilmore:  The St. Paul activist makes his first appearance – although the current crowd of St. Paul Republicans may have ranked him higher.

MIchelle Benson: Senator Benson is the first of many female conservatives on this years’ list.

Paul Mirengoff (2010 Ranking 23) and Scott Johnson (2010 Ranking 16): The Power Line colleagues – both of whom ranked in the money last year – fell off a bit this year.

Taxpayers League: And that wasn’t the only surprise.

Jack Tomczak: The former Bachmann aided turned talk show host turned punching bag of the deranged is just getting started in the “Target of Hate” business.  He’s had a great start this year.

Joe Soucheray (2010 Ranking 26): The change to sports talk hasn’t helped Souch’s fortunes – misfortunes? – in this poll.

Marianne Stebbins: The head of Minnesota’s Ron Paul movement gets on the board – barely.  She might have scored higher among some MN Republicans.

Mary Kiffmeyer (2010 Ranking – nominated): The former secretary of state got one vote both years.  This won’t be the last we’ll hear of Voter ID, though.

AM1280 The Patriot (2010 Ranking – nominated): The little station that could…did.

Roger Chamberlain: The Freshman senator from White Bear Lake started what should be a good career as a lefty piñata (that swats back harder)

Tom Hackbarth: Libs considered the Senator guilty until proven innocent last year – but this year, there’s no question that at least one voter thinks MN liberals hate Tom Hackbarth.

Michele Bachmann’s Dog: From a voter who nominated quite a few other members of Bachmann’s household.

Stanley Hubbard: Liberals apparently think that acknowledging conservatives occasionally have a point – as Channel Five did during the 2010 campaign – makes you “just like Fox News”.

Walter Hudson: The Tea Party leader showed up on the tally this year.

Andrew Breitbart: Notwithstanding that he’s not a Minnesotan, Breitbart got a nod.

Pat Anderson (2010 Ranking: Nominated): The former State Auditor can run the numbers if she wants, but she came in the same place she did in 2010.

Michele Bachmann’s Kids: Unless one of them turns out to hate her.  Then they’ll love the kid.  Til they reconcile.

Norm Coleman (2010 Ranking – 9): From #9 in 2010 to a single vote this year, Coleman is not the mightiest to fall in this edition of the poll.

Tony Hernandez: The Fourth CD Republican got nominated by one voter who concentrated on “minority” and female conservatives.

Kermit (2010 Ranking: Nominated): Kermit holds steady after two years.  That’s not bad!

Marcus Bachmann: I’d have put the Representative’s husband higher.  But the Bachmann family has plenty of votes, all in all…

Anyone with half a brain: Someone wanted to cut to the chase.

Swiftee (2010 Ranking 29): Swiftee – persona non grata at just about every Twin Cities leftyblog (including MinnPost) actually got more votes this year than in 2010.  The competition was just that much harder.  But Swiftee was a perennial in these things long before there were blogs…

Coming up at noon today – the back of the pack!