If you take the history of the Minnesota Poll as any indication, yesterday’s numbers on the Marriage Amendment might be encouraging for amendment supporters:

The increasingly costly and bitter fight over a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is a statistical dead heat, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.

Six weeks before Election Day, slightly more Minnesotans favor the amendment than oppose it, but that support also falls just short of the 50 percent needed to pass the measure.

Wow.  That sounds close!

But as always with these polls, you have to check the fine print.  And the “Minnesota Poll” buries its fine print in a link well down the page; you don’t ever actually find it in the story itself.  And it contains the partisan breakdown (with emphasis added):

The self-identified party affiliation of the random sample is: 41 percent Democrat, 28 percent Republican and 31 percent independent or other.

That’s right – to get this virtual tie, the Strib, in a state that just went through photo-finish elections for Governor and Senator, and has been on the razor’s edge of absolute equality between parties for most of a decade, sampled three Democrats for every two Republicans to get to a tie.

If you believe – as I do – that the “Minnesota Poll” is first and foremost a DFL propaganda tool, intended largely to create a ‘bandwagon effect” to suppress conservative turnout (and we’ll come back to that), then this is good news; the Marriage Amendment is likely doing better  than the poll is showing.

What it does mean, though, is that they are working to build a narrative; that the battle over gay marriage is much more closely-fought than it is.

And the narrative’s players are already on board with this poll.  The Strib duly interviews Richard Carlbom, the former Dayton staffer who is leading the anti-Amendment

Actually, here’s my bet; the November 4 paper will show a “surge of support” that turns out to be much larger than any that actually materializes at the polls.

More At Noon.

UPDATE:  I wrote this piece on Sunday.  Monday morning, all of the local newscasts duly led with “both ballot initiatives are tied!”.

If you’re trying to find a construction job in Minnesota, you can get a job putting siding on the DFL’s narrative.

UPDATE 2:  Professor David Schultz at Hamline University – no friend of conservatism, he – did something I more or less planned to do on Wednesday; re-ran the numbers with a more realistic partisan breakdown:

Why is the partisan adjustment important? The poll suggests significant partisan polarization for both amendments, with 73% of DFLers opposing the marriage amendment and 71% of GOPers supporting. Similar partisan cleavages also exist with the Elections Amendment. If this is true, take the marriage Amendment support at 49% and opposition at 47%. If DFLers are overpolled by 3% and GOP underpolled by 6%, and if about 3/4 of each party votes in a partisan way, I would subtract about 2.25% from opposition (3% x .75) and add 4.5% to support (6% x .75) and the new numbers are 53.5% in support and 44.75% against. This is beyond margin or error.

If one applies the correction to the Elections Amendment there is about an 80% DFL opposition to it and a similar 80% GOP support for it. Then the polls suggest approximately 56.8% support it and 41.6% oppose.

Which brings us very nearly back to the 3:2 margin  for the Voter ID amendment, and the tight but solid lead for the Marriage Amendment that every other poll – the reputable ones, anyway – have found.

The grandfather – great-grandfather? – of the “Fact-Check” industry, “60 Minutes whitewashes for Obama:

Tonight, CBS aired a 60 Minutes interview with President Obama. But curiously enough, the news magazine show did not air a clip of Obama admitting to interviewer Steve Kroft that some of his campaign ads contain mistakes and that some even “go overboard.”

Anyone remember when “60 Minutes” was the “gold standard of journalism?”

I know – that never really meant anything.

But anyone who doubts that “60 Minutes” is anything but a geriatric propaganda mill for the left has been asleep for half a generation.

Er, wait, no.  We didn’t.

Yet again.

“Piss Christ”, the apotheosis of government-subsidized art. Greek geek pun intended.

No, yet again we merely pointed out our Administration’s incompetence, double standards and incompetence. I know, I wrote “incompetence” twice. I think it’s appropriate.

Pat Hall is running for Senate in Senate District 57. Here’s his website.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• Ed is and I are on today from 1-3.  I suspect we’ll be talking Benghazi, tax returns, polling, and what-have-you.  We’ll also be talking with candidate Pat Hall and, coincidentally, his brother, Senator Dan Hall.
• Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  Join him from 9-11 every Saturday!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. 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) .
• New – send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• 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!

I’ve always wanted to create a new word for the English language [1].

And I think that word is going to be “Inshgoogle” (pronounced “Insh-GOO-gle”).

It’s a corruption of the Arabic “Insh’allah”, meaning “If it’s Allah’s will”.  Its meaning, essentially, becomes “If my Google information is correct…”

That is all.

(more…)

…that the only network to actually try to vet the President, and to throw him a pitch with even the eeeeeensiest bit of heat on it…

…is Univision?

David Harsanyi at Human Events has ht a retrospective on the “highlights” of the Obama Personality Cult. 

Of course, it’s his socialist and anti-market philosophy that I really dislike about the guy.  But the personality cult he and his handlers built around himself always seemed vaguely…

…North Korean?

That’s one word for it.

I’ll say this – even if I were still a liberal, this would have made me extremely uncomfortable.  And yes, that is a bipartisan thing;  a lot of Ron Paul supporters are a little less messianic, but not much less personality-focused.

Read Harsanyi’s whole piece.

A very wise friend of mine, who has gotten heavily involved in the Ron Paul camp in the past couple of years, asked “So in this election, you have a choice between the guy who’ll take 35% of your income, and the guy who’ll take 39%”.

Er…take the 35%?

And work like hell to get a conservative Senate and keep the House?

I know; many among the Ron Paul supporters – especially the ones who are trying to pretend Gary Johnson is relevant – are claiming there’s no difference between Romney and

Incrementalism is only bad if a) it’s in the wrong direction and b) you can’t at least maintain, if not accelerate, it in the right direction.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writers:

Liberals are having hysterics about Romney’s remark. Conservatives are tying themselves in knots trying to justify it. I wish they’d stop, just stop.

Candidate Romney, seeking donations from wealthy people, played to their prejudices about producers and takers.

Candidate Obama, seeking donations from wealthy people, played to their prejudices about religion and guns.

Both candidates did it and for the same reasons. Look, it’s simple human nature. You must convince donors you are on their side in order to convince them to give you money. It’s a standard campaign fundraising tactic, taught in all the candidate schools and used by every political party.

Utilizing proven fundraising techniques says nothing about the candidate’s true feelings on the issue, and says nothing about the truth of the underlying issue because it’s not an appeal to truth, it’s an appeal to prejudice and we all know it. Candidates don’t say those things because they’re true, they say them because that’s what shakes the money loose, which is all that matters in a campaign fundraiser.

But it’s not politically correct to admit that you appeal to prejudice to raise money so all politicians deny it and their supporters try to spin it when what voters really should do is accept it and ignore it. Campaign fundraising is a distraction from the real questions: what will you do when you get elected to fix the economy and keep the nation safe?

Drop the fake outrage and talk about things that you, as politicians, actually can do something about: the budget, taxes, war. Can we do that, please?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

But it’s the “fake outrage” that gives Obama’s media so much fodder!

Headline lost to history:

“Krauts Keep Kasserine Pass. Roosevelt blames Ronald Reagan. Film “Desperate Journey” insulting to Nazis.”

Have you noticed something?

No “Minnesota Poll” yet this cycle.  Ditto the Humprey Institute.

Usually by this point in an election cycle, they’ve run a poll showing the Republican candidate down by some absurd amount that turns out to be many times greater than the eventual margin of victory (or defeat) for the DFLer.

Now, I’ve been writing about the HHH and Strib “Minnesota” polls for quite some time.  I noted that since 1988, the Strib Minnesota Poll has consistently shorted Republicans by a consistently greater margin than Democrats in their pre-election polls – and that the discrepancy is even greater in elections that end up being closest.  I noted that the HHH poll is even worse – but that in polls where the DFLer appears to be in no danger, their polls end up being more accurate.

It is my contention that the Strib and the Humphrey Institute are allied – at least at the executive level – with the DFL, and use their polls to further the DFL’s ends; everyone involved is certainly aware of the “Bandwagon Effect” – the phenomenon by which voters who believe their candidates have no chance of victory will stay home.

So we’ve seen no “Minnesota” poll so far this cycle; Amy Klobuchar – perhaps the greatest beneficiary of media bias in the history of Minnesota politics, as the daughter of a former Strib columnist – seems to be in no great danger, so the polls say, from Kurt Bills (not to say I won’t do everything I can, personally, to fix that).  I’ll bet dimes to dollars the Strib polls wind up pretty darn close to the election totals, in fact!

———-

But the “Bandwagon” effect is going nationwide; Minnesota in 2008 and 2010 showed that it can keep juuuuuuuuust enough people home, if it’s relentless enough, to tip a close election.

And so you see the mainstream media already declaring the election over, based entirely on polling that is entirely based on the Democrats getting turnout they didn’t even get in 2008.

It is, in fact, the flip side of the “Low Information Voter” strategy they’ve run on their own side – convincing the ill-informed, the querulous and the not-bright that there’s a “war on women” and Obama “stands with the 99%” and “the economy was Bush’s fault but it’s almost back, any day now”; trying to convince people, especially independents, who might be sick to death of Obama and possibly thinking of voting GOP that it’s all hopeless and they should stay home.

Think about it.  Why else would they run polls that are transparently false?  That rely on assumptions that probably didn’t even occur during the post-Watergate election in 1976, much less 2008, much less today?

Because only the high-information voters either dig into the partisan breakdowns (or read the bloggers who do), and the record in Minnesota shows there are just enough incurious, too-busy, ill-informed, and just plain un-bright people to sway the matter if it’s close enough.

The media at all levels – bald-faced cheerleaders like the LATimes and the Strib and the supposedly-ethical ones like NPR alike – are going to be beating the “it’s over” drum constantly ’til the election.

The well-informed people know it’s baked wind.

But it’s not aimed at them.

John Gilmore at Minnesota Conservatives is demanding the U of M release the video of Governor Dayton’s speech to the Humphrey Institute, which we discussed earlier this week.

Here’s Gilmore’s email to the U of M, which explains it better than I could:

Email to U of M General Counsel

If, as Gilmore notes, the U really did claim it was “too expensive” to videotape the Governor, and that local TV stations taped the event but are sitting on it (why?) – well, what’s the U protecting?

He’s a busy, busy man.

It was in observance of “Talk Like A Pirate Day”, yesterday.

Perhaps we should respond with “Talk With An Israeli Prime Minister” day…

UPDATE:  As commenter Jeff Rosenberg (Hey, Jeff!) points out, Media Matters has leapt to the President’s defense, noting that the photo above is three years old.

The MM4A piece is silent on what the President was doing.   Playing golf with Jay-Z?  Meeting with (and bowing to) Somali pirates?   Playing video games with his daughters?  At an Eva Longoria fundraiser?  We don’t know.  All we do know is, it wasn’t “meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at this crucial moment in both nations’ history”.

The “reporting” by “Mother Jones” on Mitt Romney’s “47%” remark is looking, more and more, to be an invocation of the McKay Corolllary (“Any time the liberal media (to say nothing of leftyblogs) “reports” on putative conservative misdeeds, they should be distrusted but verified.  And then, to an almost-mathemetical standard of invariably, distrusted some more.”) to Berg’s Seventh Law (“When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”)

When originally presented by David Corn of Mother Jones, there was no disclosure that part of Mitt Romney’s controversial answer about 47% of voters was missing from the tape.

Since only an edited version originally was presented, there was no way to know if something was missing. After all, it was edited, so of course something was missing by definition.

Romney has admitted that the answer on the video, which he didn’t remember except for the video, was “inelegant.” That’s why Romney asked for the full audio/video to be released.

Corn reacted vigorously to Romney’s suggestion that he only provided “snippets,” and then Corn released what purported to be the complete audio/video in two parts. The “complete” version was consistent with the original edited audio/video. Again, there was no disclosure by Corn that there might be something missing. (Corn added an “update” after my original story ran.”

To the contrary, Corn went out of his way to assert that there was no “filtering” and that the full audio/video had been released. As Corn explained to Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast (emphasis mine):

Is the liberal media making too much of the Romney video? “It feeds into a narrative he’s been fighting all along, that he’s a 1 percenter, not one of us, doesn’t really understand it,” Corn says. And since these are the candidate’s own words, “there’s no filter here whatsoever, there’s no out-of-context argument to be made.”

But there was a filter. As reported in my prior post, Corn has admitted that 1-2 minutes of audio/video are missing. That missing audio/video includes part of Romney’s controversial answer.

Maybe even Berg’s Seventh Law and its McKay Corollary, hitherto nearly airtight, is obsolete and needs strenghening?  Maybe upgrade to the “Sixty-First-Minute Law of Media Bias“; any time the mainstream (to say nothing of overtly liberal) media presents supposedly damaging information about conservatives, they should presumed guilty of dishonest editing or outright manufacturing of evidence until proven innocent”.

…I wish had boned up on my math to the point where I could actually have taken a shot at astrophysics.

Because this looks really, really cool.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

I like this analogy, from Instapundit

***

Don’t think that zero is as low as interest rates can go: money as a store of value is also threatened.

Primitive man often faced an interest rate of -%50 per hour, if he caught some meat for instance, and was trying to get it into the bellies of his family it spoiled or was snatched by competitors. Now you can store your income and wealth in financial instruments and only buy meat when you want to eat it, or keep it in the fridge or freezer for even greater convenience. We take all this for granted, but as near-zero nominal interest rates come to be paired with rising inflation–an outcome that is pretty much guaranteed under QE3–even coin and currency will no longer keep stored value from wasting away. We are heading into difficulties that should be a thing of the past, and its not just bedbugs and resistant disease. Government is squandering EVERYTHING.

***

So we need to invest in stuff that won’t spoil, that people will be willing to trade for after the economy collapses. Honestly, gold bullion doesn’t strike me as useful for everyday living. More useful, durable stuff would be:

Whiskey

Bullets

Toilet paper

I’m pretty much good to go.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Americans at large – other than Mormons – have never really taken the possibility of complete collapse seriously.

It’s looking smarter and smarter.

I bet I just got onto a DHS watchlist, didn’t I?

When every airport waiting lounge television dial was welded to the CNN channel, I didn’t object because I don’t watch airport television.

But when my Hyundai dealer does it while my car is in for service . . . .

(Or words to that effect.  It’s from Google Translate.  But I figure most of my audience isn’t going to be able to correct me on this [1])

So I went to Mai Village last night.  Mai Village was one of the little welter of ma-and-pa small businesses that, between the mid-eighties and the beginning of the Central Corridor construction, helped make University Avenue…

…well, not exactly “thrive”, but then the only thing that really thrives in Saint Paul is government.  But compared to the desolate, vacant, blighted strip that the street was in the eighties, a couple of waves of Southeast Asian immigrants – Vietnamese and then H’mong, Lao and Cambodian – at least brought people, activity, commerce and life to the Avenue.

But it wasn’t the kind of business that Saint Paul’s government or the Met Council wanted – white, MPR-friendly, upper-middle-class, Caribou/Patagonia/Noodles-And-Company kinds of businesses.  So they decided to drive their accursed train straight down University.  This, on top of Minnesota and Saint Paul’s already-crushing regulatory burden.

Someone asked in the comment section the other day “what kind of business will make it on University?”  Little service-oriented businesses that don’t need parking, maybe?  Tiny hole-in-the-wall places with as little overhead as possible and fanatical little clienteles, I’d suspect.  The big winners, of course, will be the big national chains – Caribou, Patagonia, NoodleCo, Chipotle – that have the financial wherewithal to ride out the construction and the political clout to score vacant space near the stations that will squat in the street every half-mile through Frogtown and the near North End.

Of course, if you’re in between those stations, you’re screwed.

Mai Village isn’t a hole in the wall – not anymore.  When I first when there, of course, it was almost literally that; a nondescript little warren you entered through a door in a seedy-looking brick wall with very little fanfare directly off of Uni, with fantastic food.  They made the “mistake” of investing in their business and in University avenue, back before the Central Corridor.  They built a beautiful restaurant, full of Vietnamese artifacts and decor and big gorgeous windows looking out on the street, back when the street was a slowly rebuilding strip of humanity.  It’s big, comfortable, serene – and I do love the food.

Today the view is of rail construction, and the Mai Village is hurting, struggling to make the payments on an investment based on pre-construction customer base with a clientele that’s been gutted by the rail construction.

So I’d like to grab dinner there one of these nights (actually I did, last night, but I’m game again); I’m craving the chicken curry, truth be told.

So I’m going to have a…well, not “MOB” event, really, but I’m going to throw this out there; I’m going to Mai Village next Thursday, September 27.  Let’s say 7:00, to allow time for people to try to navigate the area.  I’ll just be grabbing some more chicken curry (or maybe the ginger pork with rice noodles – I’ve been craving good Bun Heo Nuong since Vina closed).  If you can show up, by all means do.  It’s not a “protest”, per se, although I won’t discourage people venting about the Mogadishu-like morass that the construction has inflicted on the neighborhood, the misery of trying to get anywhere in the area, and the difficulty of parking (and I’ll give you a St. Paul-resident’s shortcut or two for those of you coming to Frogtown for the first time, later next week).  And it’s not political, really – liberals’ money is just as good as anyone’s.   Come on down.

If you’d be so kind as to leave an RSVP in the comments, I’ll make sure I get enough seats when I go next week.  Or just show up.  Either way, hope to see you there.

(more…)

I live in the Fourth CD – St. Paul, Ramsey and an unfortunate tail of Washington counties – and I’ve focused mostly on that Congressional race so far.

But if you’re a conservative, you need to pay attention to the race in CD8, where Chip Cravaack – one of the single greatest Cinderella stories of the 2010 cycle – is fighting a very tough re-election bid.

He’s up against Rick Nolan, an old-school northwoods ultraliberal DFLer who served in Congress back in the statist seventies.  While the MN DFL is an intellectual throwback to a time when neither US industry nor the notion of big government had any real challenges, Nolan is a literal throwback:

• Jobs be damned:  Nolan sided with Twin Cities environmentalists and the EPA to block the PolyMet mine – and the 500 jobs it’d have brought to an area that could really, really use 500 jobs.
• We All Belong To Government: Back when he was in Congress, he repeatedly voted to jack up small business taxes – and has given us no indication he’d be any less a tax-extremist than Barack Obama or Mark Dayton.
• A One-Man Death Panel: Nolan supports Obamacare, which would gut the Medicare that so many of his constituents depend on.

The American Action Network just released an infographic about Nolan:

It’s suitable for framing and sending to any relatives you have up north.

Or just emailing.  Whatever.

The DFL is trying to tell northern Minnesota that they can return to their glory days of the 1960’s and 1970’s by returning to the government of the era.  It’s just not true.

The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance has released its candidate grades.

When reading this, remember – “F*”, with the asterisk, means “didn’t return the questionnaire”.  While most Republicans (and a huge proportion of DFLers outside the metro) scored well, plenty of Republicans in tough DFL districts who would be solid on the Second Amendment very likely let the questionnaire slide; you gotta pick your battles.  Don’t be put off by all the F* grades, anyway.

But most importantly, remember – the Second Amendment is a guarantee of a human and civil right.  I’d vote for an anti-gun candidate no more than I would a pro-censorship one.

Either should you.

Still waiting for White House reporters to ask about Kathleen Sebelius’ apparently-illegal mixing of campaigning and work.

Reporters covering the White House don’t seem to have many questions about Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was last week found in violation of federal law against engaging in political activity while on the job.

That would apparently  be racist.

The media – in carrying out their role as Obama’s Praetorian Guard – has been doing its damnedest to try to paint Romney’s “47%” remark as a huge gaffe.

But Mitt was right; 47% of the people don’t pay taxes.  And in some cases – the poor – there may be a reason for this.

The lefty and media (ptr) came out with all sorts of rationalizations and tu quoques –

• “Republican states pay less than average!” was one I saw on TV yesterday (Channel 9 was duly parroting the Media Matters chanting points), which is hilarious, given that the states they point out invariably have lower per-capita incomes and costs of living than the Blue states; you’ve got liberals bitching about progressive taxation!
• “Many rich people pay no taxes!” – Leaving aside the obvious answer – it’s a red herring, the middle class and wealthy as a whole do pay the vast majority of this nation’s tax burdeen – well, gosh, d’ya suppose we should simplify the tax system to remove some of the byzantine loopholes?   A flat tax would sure fix that…
• “Part of that is the Bush Tax cuts!” – This is a dumb evasion.  The Bush tax cuts were across-the-board.  But it’s hordes of “targeted tax cuts” that have so imbalanced the system – because the tax system has long been an instrument of redistribution.

But whatever the qualifications and rationalizations, whatever the reasons for some and the outrages of others, the fact remains that this society can not survive with, soon, less than half of its people paying in.

Romney should not back off of this statement.  His campaign has been far too timid lately; while for about a week or two after the Ryan selection he was cooking with gas, rife with promise that this nation could finally have The Big Conversation it’s needed for at least a generation (the one that Tip O’Neill blocked thirty years ago), he’s been running a campaign only a weasel consultant could love since then.

We need to reform entitlements.  We need an America where everyone has some skin in the game.  Above all, we need a nation that doesn’t believe government is something we “belong to”, but rather something we hire to do some distasteful jobs.

If I were to suggest a pseudo-MOB event , hypothetically, to get together at the Mai Village one of these next evenings – partly to support a business that is beleaguered by the Met Council’s Toy Train, partly to protest the Met Council, partly because Vietnamese food really rocks and has gotten criminally short shrift since Thai became the hip Asian cuisine – what would be better…:

• Thursday night
• Saturday night
• Sunday night

Nothing super formal; just thinking about doing an informal “Hey, let’s do this” kind of thing.

(And wishing I’d done it for my good friends at the late, great Caribe Bistro while there was still time…)

Please sound off in the comments.

The Legal Insurrection blog goes over the Boston Glob’s defense of Elizabeth Warren’s “Native American” claims…

…which, by the way, inadvertently destroys those claims.