To:  Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and the ACLU of Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, mere peasant
Re: SCOM Decision

All,

Suck it.

That is all.

(more…)

Join the Northern Alliance Radio Network all this week at the Minnesota State Fair!

We’re at Murphy and Underwood, on the northeast side of Machinery Hill in Saint Paul.

View NARN at the Fair in a larger map
Today, Brad Carlson will be interviewing Phil Krinkie of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota.

So join us all week on the Northern Alliance Radio Network!

The first two parts of this series have been so successful (Part 1, Part 2) that it’s time to try out part 3 of this series.

Q: Did you hear that Mitt Romney made teh birther joke?  He is teh birther!
A: Right.  And Steven Colbert is really a Republican talk show host.  By the way, are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Q: Isn’t Mitt Romney going to repeal “Roe V. Wade?”
A: Presidents don’t “repeal” SCOTUS decisions.  Now, or four years ago.  Speaking of which – are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Q: But Romney opposes abortion rights, doesn’t he?
A: I’m sorry – were you unaware that Republicans largely think abortion is murder?  Just like they did four years ago.  Speaking of which – are you better off now than you were then?

Q: Where are Mitt Romney’s tax records?
A: Dunno.  The fact that the IRS hasn’t slapped a huge lien on him is probably evidence enough that the real answer is “who cares, and are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Q: How about teh tyrannical GOP treating the Ron Paul delegates teh way tehy did?
A: Well, they did better than they did four years ago. The party has every right to focus on the majority and de-emphasize a disruptive minority that hasn’t quite gotten enough clout to change everything yet. Speaking of which – are you better off now than four years ago?

Q: How about Todd Akin?
A: Is he better off than he was four years ago?

Q: Did you see teh poll that shows liberals is smarter than teh conservatives?
A: I asked if you’re doing better than you were four years ago

Q: So is the GOP a big tent, or is it?
A:Who can afford a tent?  Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Q: Do you think the GOP has conceded teh Latino vote?
A: Dunno. But a lot of Latinos are doing worse than four years ago; more undocs are leaving the US than coming here.  What does that tell you?

Q: Ron Paul refused to endorse Mitt Romney.
A: Finally, something that’s the same as four years ago.

I’ve been a huge Dinesh D’Souza fan since I read his Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became An Extraordinary President over a decade ago; it may have been the best Reagan bio ever.

And I got a chance to see 2016 over the weekend.  It didn’t disappoint:

The movie’s thesis is…

(Spoiler Alert: I’m going to talk spoilers below the jump, although to be fair I think much of what’s in the movie has been in the public domain; this is just the first high-profile place I’ve seen it all collected into one coherent thesis)

(more…)

Seen above a Romney/Ryan rally on Saturday:

It’s almost like Protest Warrior has come back to life.

When you live in a Democrat stronghold like Saint Paul, you get used to the idea that your political signs are expendable.  Every single year, I put signs out on my lawn, on a modestly busy street (which is busier now that University looks like Stalingrad).

And every year, they are stolen, or destroyed, almost immediately.  I think I had a sign last a week or two once.   It happens to every single one of the Republican neighbors I have (who are rare, but do exist).  We’ve noticed over the years how uncanny it is, that our signs – on every street, simultaneously – will get vandalized.

“It’s just kids”, say the local DFL operatives.  But for whatever reason my DFLer neighbor’s Dayton/Obama/Franken/McCollum/Klobuchar/Kerry signs never got touched, even as serial waves of GOP contender signs did.  Wonder why that was?

But that’s in St. Paul, a city with decades of one-party government.

Up in the Alexandria, the Republicans are more established and the Democrats are more desperate.

It says “Don’t Feed the Animals”.  It’s a reference to a line from a Franson video earlier this year in which the freshman conservative rep said welfare treated people like animals.  The left yanked a sentence or two out of context to make it sound like Franson was claiming welfare recipients were animals, and have spent months on a fairly unseemly heckling campaign.

Her opponent’s main campaign point, to the extent that he has one, has been trying to tie Franson to that non-statement.

It’s not isolated; the same stencil was apparently used on dozens of Franson’s signs.  Whoever did this put a fair amount of effort into it.

Now, the opponent would be stupid to actively approve such a move.  It’s a lot more likely that’s  an overzealous campaign volunteer doing some credit work.

Seriously – stencils?  That’s pretty elaborate, even for Saint Paul-level anti-GOP hate.

This is what Republicans face out there, no matter where they are.

Franson’s hoping to replace the signs, by the way – and unlike her opponent, she doesn’t have Alida Messinger pelting her with checks.  If you’ve got a buck or two to peel off to help, she could use it.

In a year when all the Democrats have is chanting points and a failed president, you can expect a lot of this.

Representative Steve Smith, tossed in the primaries, gave his last speech as a legislator the other day.  Go to the Strib, which cries its crocodile tears at the loss of a “moderate”, to see his remarks.

Rep. Smith:  Thanks for the good things you did do during your 22 years in the Legislature, including your solid support for the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

As a personal aside, as a Republican who’s been a union member? Supporting unions who actually do, as you say, “negotiate for safer working conditions, reasonable benefits, and fair pay in return for their labor”, is a perfectly fine thing.

But government unions “negotiate” with the people that they paid to have elected.  That’s a little different.  And it’s a distinction you seemed pretty unclear about.

And that cost you.

There’ll be no Northern Alliance Radio Network today.  The Minnesota Voters’ Alliance bought the time this week for both the Saturday and Sunday shows.  So Ed, Brad and I have the weekend off.

And I’m not gonna say I don’t enjoy it!

By the way, join the NARN all next week at the Minnesota State Fair.

• Brad Carlson will be interviewing Phil Krinkie of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota
• Brad will talk with Karin Housley.  GOP endorsed candidate for State Senate in SD39.
• I’ll be interviewing Minnesota Senate candidate Rick Karschnia (SD65) and House candidate Carlos Conway (HD65B) on Wednesday.
• Thursday’s a big day; we’ll be talking with Tony Hernandez, GOP-endorsed candidate for the US House in CD4, and with Sue Jeffers, GOP candidate for Ramsey County Commission.
• Friday?  SD53’s Pam Cunningham will be on the air.

So join us all week on the Northern Alliance Radio Network!

…and ripped it out of the railbed, and beat Obama and the Dems over the head with it?

Well, it’s one of the most wonderful times of the year on the NARN – our annual Minnesota State Fair broadcasts!

Today on the broadcast, Brad Carlson and I will be talking with 2nd District GOP representative John Kline – it’s something of a Fair-time tradition for us – and also with Princess Kay of the Milky Way!

Tune in on AM1280 The Patriot from 5-7 tonight!

Joe Doakes from Como Park apparently wants to cover the same turf Larry King did in his old “USA Today” column:

Minnesota is in the middle of the pack on gun rights, not rotten, not great.

Minorities can’t get a job because The White Man is oppressing them – now they need more sleep? What next, affirmative action for sleepers?

Federal shenanigans to artificially prop up the housing market? Or local Vacant Building ordinances at work?

Finally, can we get Russ Stark busy on this, so we can stop seeing those annoying Packers jerseys around town?

I may just apply for some sleep-based entitlement.  Today, anyway.

The other day, we mentioned 4th CD GOP chairman John Kysylyczyn’s canceling of the only meeting scheduled for the district’s full committee before the election.  Under district rules, the full committee is the only body that can authorize the district to donate the second half of the district’s customary $10,000 donation to its endorsed candidate, Tony Hernandez.

The committee did, in fact, vote last May to donate the first $5,000 installment to Hernandez.

The vote on the donation passed…:

VC6 Brown : Yea

VC5 Mueller: Yea

VC4 Windsor: Nay

VC3 Taylor: Yea

VC2 Grinols: Yea

VC1 Williams: Yea

State Exec VC Regnier: Yea

Secretary Overlander: Yea

Deputy Chair Boguszewski: Yea

Chair Kysylyczyn: Nay

So back when the district did, in fact, vote on donating money to Hernandez, Kysylyczyn voted no.

He had a reason, of course:

Chair Kysylyczyn: While I supported the donation of $5000 to the Hernandez campaign, I vote NO on the motion before the committee because I support the idea proposed by Mr. Boguszewski of disbursing funds through a matching funds donation process as he has done in his BPOU for their endorsed candidates. A portion of the funds would be provided up front, and the balance provided on a one to one match with private dollars, up to a $5000 cap. Calculations for the matching funds process would start the day the candidate was endorsed. It is my hope that a matching funds policy can be adopted in the future.

The point  of making your district donations a “match” is to provide an incentive for the candidates to work hard at fundraising.  It works just fine when you’re a BPOU trying to get a new, or recalcitrant, candidate to raise funds on a somewhat level playing field.

When fighting for a Congressional seat in a district that hasn’t sent a Republican to Washington in 65 years, with a party unit that can be fairly said to be “rebuilding”, and where Betty McCollum will have a million dollars coming right out of the gate?  While I get the idea, it seems at best to be just a little overelaborate over $5,000.

So what does it say to future candidates?  “We’ve just endorsed you to spend the next seven months of your life working pretty close to full time, putting your job, family and real life on the sideline to take a run at one of the most difficult assignments anywhere in American politics, running as a Republican in CD4 against an incumbent candidate who sleeps on a king-size bed made of union money and will, if you are lucky, only outspend you 20-1.  So here’s a few hoops you gotta jump through.  Oh, you’re welcome!”

Of course, that was then – in May.  Now, there’s the little matter of getting another meeting called to get the second $5K installment voted on.

As Todd Akin discovered this past week, rape is no laughing matter…

…if you’re a Republican pol.

Now, Democrats?  That’s another story.

But before Franken was a senator he was a writer on the TV show Saturday Night Live. Then, he famously joked about raping CBS reporter Lesley Stahl.

As New York magazine reported in 1995, from a writing session that the reporter sat in on:

Franken: “And, ‘I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley’s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.’ Or, ‘That’s why you never see Lesley until February.’ Or, ‘When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her.’”

Hah!  Funny!  Rape ! Hahahahah!

With the national conversation now turning to women’s issues as a result of the bizarre and offensive comments by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin over the weekend, it seems a bit odd that Vice President Biden would take the stage with Franken, considering his own lack of sensitivity to the horrors of rape.

No it doesn’t.  The media only holds sins against PC, intelligence, science, fact, logic and morality against conservatives.

The ground was wet and the air noticeably cool for a late August morning in 1942.  The men of the Italian Savoia Regiment were likely nervous.  In the midst of a Russian counterattack than had driven a wedge between the Italian 8th Army and the German 6th Army in the Ukraine, the Savoia had been thrown as a last-second, stop gap measure.  Facing them were 2,000 men of the Siberian 812th Infantry Regiment.  With bugles blaring and cries of “Savoia!” and “Caricat” (charge), the Savoia Regment galloped into the record books.

It was the last cavalry charge in military history.*

…

The regiment was the 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalleggeri (Cavalry Regiment), one of oldest and last actual combat cavalry units in any of the major military powers by World War II.  Founded in 1692, by Gian Piossasco de Rossi, one of the most powerful Italian noble families, the Savoia Cavalleggeri carried forward a number of ancient traditions to the modern battlefield.  The unit’s helmets were emblazoned with black crosses, in commemoration of the Battle of Madonna di Campana in 1706 when the unit captured a French battle flag. Each of the 600 men wore a red necktie in honor of a wounded dispatch rider – from the 1790s.  And last, but not least, the units still carried sabers.  Sabers that were drawn on August 24, 1942.

The Italian 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalry Regiment in training. One would have found few changes from the units’ drills 250 years earlier

The 3rd Dragoons was but one unit of many among the Italian military presence in Russia.  From early July of 1941, the Italian military had sought to provide assistance to the German invasion of Soviet Russia.  Indeed, the entire Eastern Front became a clarion call to unify the various fascist and nationalist element of Europe that had for decades defined themselves in large part to their opposition to Communism.  Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Slovakian, Finnish, and various Norwegian and French units would eventually fight on the Eastern Front and Italy would be no different.

Despite Hitler’s misgivings, Mussolini provided two corps-sized units: the Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia (Corpo di Spedizione Italiano in Russia) and the Italian 8th Army (otherwise known as the Italian Army in Russia).  10 divisions in all would serve in Russia, roughly 290,000 men, largely in a support capacity.  Neither Hitler or the German High Command trusted the Italians, routed on so many other battlefields when bereft of German leadership, to do much more than play a patchwork role on the front line.

An Italian soldier in Russia. Over 54,000 Italians would die as POWs on the Eastern Front alone

A patchwork role was precisely what the 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalry Regiment played starting on August 23rd, 1942.  As the Axis advance on Stalingrad commenced, the Russians attempted a counter-attack at the River Don.  Focused at the point between the Italian 8th Army and German 6th, the Russian found themselves able to separate the two Axis forces.  No organized force stood in the way of the Russians being able to get back behind the German or Italian line – and thus the Savoia Regiment was quickly dispatched to block any Russian advance at the small village of Isbuschenskij.

As August 23rd gave way to the 24th, the Italians skirmished with elements of the Siberian 812th Infantry Regiment.  The Savoia was already outnumbered, 2,000 to 600, with all but one squadron on horseback when the regiment’s commander, the aristocratic royalist Colonnello Alessandro Bettoni-Cazzago gave the order to charge.  Bettoni-Cazzago, assuming that the longer he delayed an offense action, the worse the Italian position would be, attacked.  In an age where cavalry divisions were made of steel, not flesh, and fed diesel, not oats, the Italian charge seemed destined to match Lord Cardigan’s ill-fated “Charge of the Light Brigade” against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War.

The Italian 3rd Dragoons Savoia Cavalry Regiment rides into battle

The move completely took the Russians by surprise.  One squadron flanked right against the Siberians’ left flank before wheeling around again to press the advantage from behind, hurling hand grenades into the quickly disintegrating enemy line. The another squadron attacked head on and the battle wore down into brutal hand-to-hand fighting, many of the Savoia having dismounted.  Supported by a machine-gun squad, the Italians amazingly took the field, suffering only 40 killed and another 79 wounded (to say nothing of the 100 horses lost).  In return, the 3rd Dragoons killed or captured over 1,000 Russians.

Il Duce visits the Russian Front

Isbuschenskij was a rare Italian triumph on the Eastern Front and was quickly forgotten amid the horror of Stalingrad.  Six months after the last successful cavalry charge in history, the Italians had 150,000 men either killed or captured as the Axis front was smashed by the Soviets.  Italian survivors of the East were hidden by the Rome press, as veterans angrily voiced their contempt for a government that sent them to Russia woefully unprepared for the winter conditions or the enemy they faced.  Like Greece or East Africa, Russia was yet another front that Il Duce had sent Italian sons to fight and die under misleading or under-informed pretenses.  The defeat did not go unnoticed by the Italian monarchy.

Savoia’s commander, Bettoni-Cazzago, was among those royalists who returned from the Russian cold with a heated hatred for the Fascist regime.  Bettoni-Cazzago would eventually join the anti-Mussolini conspirators who would aid King Victor Emmanuel III in disposing of the Mussolini government in the late summer/early fall of 1943.

* Yes, there were horse-mounted units that fought as recently as Afghanistan and South Ossetia in 2008, but Isbuschenskij remains unique as an actual cavalry unit in an organized charge.

Brian Barnes is running for Congress in the 3rd CD.

You might not have heard of him, even if you live there.  He’s run a fairly hapless, lackluster campaign, with none of the cachet or pizzazz of Ashwin Madia.   I think the only serious question about his campaign so far has been “is Erik Paulsen going to win by two digits, or three?”

But there’s another question worth asking, too:  where the hell does he get his information?

At a “Drinking Liberally” event on Monday night, Barnes gave his opinion on Erik Paulsen’s police union endorsements.  A tracker got some tape:

(Note: Not a celebrity impersonator)

Here’s the transcript, with emphasis added:

“He’s got some signs that say police endorsed and the interesting thing is that is a group that is very, uh, the group that endorsed him is a group of extreme right wing, uh, law enforcement support group that puts up a façade if you will…” Brian Barnes 8/20/2012

The police unions are “Extreme Right Wing?”

The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association endorsed Amy Klobuchar.  They also endorsed Mark Dayton and Tarryl Clark in 2010.

The Fraternal Order of Police have also endorsed Amy Klobuchar, not to mention “extreme conservatives” like Ann Rest, Joe Atkins, Jim Carlson and plenty of others (as well as John Kline and a few other Republicans).

Both organizations also opposed the bipartisan Minnesota Personal Protection Act (the 2003-2005 carry reform bill) and Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill, which passed the legislature with bipartisan support but was vetoed by Governor Bored Dilettante, who used the Police unions’ statements to “justify” the veto in much the same way as Germany used the “Battle of Gleiwitz”.

So why would Barnes call the seemingly left-of-center police unions “extreme right wing?”

Given the left’s nationwide reliance on “low-information voters” and the fact that Twin Cities leftybloggers are the lowest-information voters of all, is he just saying it because he knows nobody will check him on it?

Had he had too many drinks already?

Or was he so depressed at being in that throng of misanthropic mopes that he just didn’t give a crap anymore?

Legal language is a funny thing.  And by “funny”, we mean “funny weird”, not “funny haha”.

One of the left’s latest chanting points – abetted by Todd Akin’s groaner last week – is that a group of GOP legislators co-sponsored a bill, HR3, better known as the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion” bill.  The title more or less explains the bill.

In the original version of the bill’s language, the term “forcible rape” was used.

Of course, in the post-Akin political news cycle du jour, there is only one type of rape; it’s eminently PC to say “all rape is rape”.

And certainly non-consensual sex is, always, rape.  No argument about it.

Of course, not all “rape” is “forcible”, by definition.  If a 56 old guy has consensual sex with, say hypothetically, a 16 year old guy, it’s statutory rape – meaning “no force was used, but it’s still considered rape since the 16 year old is not of the age of consent”.

We’re splitting linguistic and legal hairs, of course.

Splitting hairs is something Third District DFL candidate Brian Barnes wasn’t doing when he accused his opponent, incumbent Republican representative Erik Paulsen, of drawing a distinction between “Rape” and “Forcible Rape”.   Here’s a statement from Barnes’ announcement for a press conference today:

According to Brian Barnes, “The voters of our district deserve the facts on Representative Paulsen’s positions on important issues, such as his vote to support H.R. 3.

Yep, they do.  And here they are; whatever the reason for the language, it is for Paulsen’s purposes irrelevant – because Paulsen was neither an author nor co-sponsor of the bill.

The word “forcible” was removed from the bill long before Paulsen got his first chance to vote on the bill – which he did, along with a strong bipartisan majority of the House.

This is a further example of how the Barnes’ campaign,. like most Democrat campaigns this year, are trying to rope in “low-information voters” – people driven by slogans and chanting points, who don’t really think that hard about the issues.

It’s not the most egregious example from the Barnes campaign, though.  More later today.

Porkulus at work:  White House bought “Green” program ads on MSNBC

The Obama administration paid a PR firm nearly $500,000 in stimulus funds to run a barrage of ads on White House-friendly cable programs promoting its green job training program.

According to government records, the Labor Department paid the money in late 2009 to a company that negotiated a media buy on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and “The Rachel Maddow Show.” The ad was set to run more than 100 times — 14 times a week for two months.

Now that Betty McCollum has rid the nation of the scourge of Army ads in NASCAR, this might be another legislative accomplishment!

That’ll make two for her entire 12 year career!

If she does anything.

P.J. O’Rourke – the greatest writer of my generation, even though he’s a generation older than me – writes on the dolorous effect of the Baby Boomers on not just American society, but the idea of America.

O’Rourke laments the death of far-sweeping goals – going to the moon, building the biggest dam or the tallest building, being the biggest and the baddest:

But if America is still rich and strong, why should it matter that we’re no longer interested in doing anything spectacular? Maybe critics of an America whose grasp exceeds its reach are victims of atavistic machismo. Maybe we have Freudian issues. Professional help might be in order. No Americans are scheduled to go to Mars, but plenty are scheduled to go to therapy. Perhaps the realities of 2012 demand a change in attitude.

Except the change has already happened, the result of our shift from an exterior to an interior existence. America once valued the high-skilled. Now we value the high-minded. We used to admire bold ideas. Now we admire benign idealism. This doesn’t make us good, it makes us wrong. The bold can be achieved. Of the ideal, there is none in this life.

And why does it matter?

America’s retreat from visible, tangible manifestations of superiority doesn’t hurt just our pride, our economy, and our place in the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s also a bad advertising campaign. America has one great product to sell, individual liberty. It’s attractive, useful, healthy, and the fate of the world depends upon it.

We are the most important and maybe the only country that fully embodies the sanctity, dignity, independence, and responsibility of each and every person. “American” is not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a culture; it’s a fact of human freedom. Our country was not created and is not governed by a ruling class or even by majority rule. America is individuals exercising their right to do what they think is best with due respect (to the extent human nature allows) for the right of all other Americans to do likewise. This is not an ideology or a system. This is a blessing.

You should read the whole  thing.  And vote accordingly.

Last spring, this blog got into a bit of a flap with the sitting leadership of the MNGOP’s Fourth Congressional District over airing out a report that the district’s chairman, John Kysylysczyn, was pondering not getting involved in the district’s various legislative elections or, for that matter, the CD4 Congressional race.   The evidence?  An email from Kysylyczyn to a BPOU chair which circulated to a much, much wider group.

Along with that came a report – from a source inside the district’s leadership who asked for anonymity to protect themselves from reprisal – that Kysylyczyn was pondering not making the customary donation to the district’s endorsed candidate, Tony Hernandez.

While that idea apparently never got past the pondering stage – the donation did in fact pass the full committee – if current plans remain in effect, the district’s leadership apparently still doesn’t believe there’s a role for the district in the campaign (the flap also earned me a stern tongue-lashing from Kysylyczyn, who in a move unprecedented in CD4 politics, used the district’s website to tell the membership that he wouldn’t talk with bloggers because, apparently, the mainstream media is fairer to Republicans or something).

In a couple of announcements on the CD4 GOP website and the district’s Facebook page, the district’s leadership cancelled the October meeting – the only meeting remaining before the election.

And while under normal circumstances it’s just another meeting, these aren’t normal circumstances.  It’s election season.  CD4 endorsed a candidate for Congress, Hernandez, who is running an aggressive and active campaign.  Campaigns take money.  The Fourth CD reportedly has a decent little chunk of cash, in its “federal” account – $6139.48, as of the August committee meeting – which has to be spent, by law, on matters pertaining to federal races.  It’s a broad category; it can be spent on training, software, computers, consulting…

…or, naturally, the race its endorsed candidate is running.

The district can donate a maximum of $5,000 from this amount (on top of the earlier donation) to the Hernandez campaign – but not without a full committee vote.  Which requires a full committee meeting.

Which has just been cancelled until after the election.

Is this what the 4th CD GOP is supposed to be doing with its mandate?

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Many hard words have been exchanged about the 2008 election. Conservatives worry that ineligible voters swayed the election. Liberals scoff because there’s little voter fraud. What if they’re not speaking the same language?

Example: President Obama routinely talks about America’s lack of proven oil reserves. He’s a smart man and is careful with words. The phrase “proven oil reserve” doesn’t mean the oil in the ground. It means the oil you can feasibly and legally pump.

If you can’t get a federal permit to pump the oil, you can’t legally pump it, so that oil is not included in the proven reserve. And to save the planet from Global Warming, President Obama won’t give you a permit.

President Obama is technically correct. All that oil sitting under the ground, waiting for a permit to be pumped out, is NOT part of America’s “proven oil reserves.” As a result, we lack “proven oil reserves.”

What does this have to do with elections? I think there’s a similar language problem. If a convicted felon whose civil rights have not been restored goes to the polling place, signs the register, receives a ballot, marks it properly and deposits the ballot in the voting machine, is that an ineligible ballot? Yes. Is casting that ballot a case of voter fraud? No; he is who he says he was. Was it an illegal ballot? Not necessarily.

It was not illegal for that felon to cast that vote. It’s only illegal if he knowingly did it. If he didn’t know he couldn’t vote, no crime was committed. But the ballot was ineligible and should not have been counted.

When Liberals talk about fraud, convictions and illegal votes, they’re talking about a small subset of all the ineligible ballots. I’m worried about the larger pool of votes that were counted, but should not have been. Nobody seems to have hard numbers. It’s nobody’s job to police the system.

I’m concerned about votes cast by un-restored felons, yes, but also by minors, the mentally disabled who’ve lost their civil rights, and by the dead. But even after extensive conversation with Liberals, I can’t seem to achieve actual communication. We’re talking, but not the same language.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

The Dems have been pretty determined about trying to steer the conversation away from the numbers that actually matter.

I try not to watch a lot of TV.  I’ve got other things to do.

But I’ll cop to it; I’ve whiled away the odd idle hour watching a few things on TV.

And while nobody asked me, I’ve got a few observations.

• Operation Repo:  I’ve known for a while that the show was scripted, and not remotely “reality”.  But the latest round of plot lines make me wonder if they’re not hoping to be picked up by Lifetime TV.
• Hard Core Pawn: I don’t think I saw more than an episode or two of “Pawn Stars”, the grandaddy of the “how much is all this crap worth?” genre.  It never really grabbed me much.  But I like the Detroit-based “HCP”, if only because, scripted or not (and it’s just gotta be scripted), I can so totally relate to Les Gold’s quiet slow burn with his endlessly-feuding children.  It’s given me the
• Hotel Hell:  If you were waiting for a kinder, gentler Gordon Ramsey, Hotel Hell is the show for you.  I, however, was not waiting for that Chef Ramsey.
• Top Shots:  Not even sure if the show is on the air anymore.  But watching it, I noticed first that the plot, format and pacing were exactly the same as Project Runway, only with marksmanship instead of fashion.  Then I noticed the used exactly the same incidental music  – between segments, to foreshadow things, everything. It is, from a production standpoint, literally Project Runway with guns!
• Master Chef: Master Chef covers the waterfront, from the sublime to the ridiculous.  Ridiculous: the spectacle of the two non-Ramsey judges (Hector Alizondo Joe Bastianich and Flounder from Animal House Graham Elliot) audibly wincing as they sing the praises of Wal-Mart steak, apparently prodded by a rolled up and sharpened wad of product-placement checks.   On the sublime upside, Becky Reams is the new Casey Thompson.
• LIzard Lick Towing: On the one hand, coming up with new “home-spun” lines for Ronnie Shirley (“that lady was greasier than an undercooked burger in a fat guy’s underwear on a hot day”) has got to be keeping some good writers in work.  On the other hand, I give Amy Shirley another season of bodybuilding before she turns into Skeletor.
• Combat Pawn:  They’ve done the impossible: taken one of my favorite subjects (firearms) and a reality-TV subject I”m slowly warming up to (pawn shop dramedy) and added excruciating tedium!

That shoudl do it for now.

What does this chart represent?

No, it’s not the Brett Favre Media Bell Curve. It’s the comparison between:

• Obama’s projected unemployment with Porkulus (Dark blue line)
• Obama’s projected unemployment without Porkulus (Light blue line)
• The actual unemployment rate (Red dots)

Question for all you Democrats; if Romney releases his tax returns, will those red dots merge with the blue line?

(Via Instapundit)

Peggy Noonan on the media’s kid-gloves coddling of Slow Joe Biden:

If it had been a Republican vice presidential candidate who had made those gaffes, one after another, so comically, and all on tape, the subject today of the panel would be how stupid is this person, can this person possibly govern?

They know what matters, though. Romney’s income taxes and holding impromptu on-air conference committees to reconcile the Romney and Ryan budgets, three months before the election and five months before they take (God willing) office.

A few quick facts:

1. Women,for whatever reason, tend to vote much more reliably to the left than do men (at least until they have kids; then it levels out)
2. Women use more healthcare services than men.  Lots more.

So who’s going to be the big loser when the Democrats take control (Control! Of womens’ health!) of healthcare, and – inevitably – need to ratchet up the rationing?

Ann Althouse:

Come on, be honest. Don’t you want the federal government to have a complete overview of health care? The potential rationality is stunning. And one thing in this emerging rationality is clear: Although women tend to love the notion of government control more than men do, it is women who will be told they’ll have to cut back. On treatments. And years. You know we’ve been taking more than our share.

Read the whole thing.

And remember the example whenever libs start yapping about people voting “against their own best interests”.

I’ve seen few better explanations of the Dems’ “Narratives For The Ill-Informed” strategy:

I used to joke “If a conservative orders a pizza in the woods, and no liberal is there to hear him, is he still an extremist?”

It’s not really much of a joke anymore.