Lara Logan shreds the Administration’s lies on Afghanistan:
Remember all those years Democrats looked their knowing looks and said “but Bush hasn’t gotten Bin Laden!”, concluding with a smug grin like a toddler who’d just filled a diaper. We’d reply “if they killed Bin Laden tomorrow, the war wouldn’t end” – but they were too busy showing the diaper, apparently, to pay attention.
Sometimes it sucks to be right.
Project Veritas is back with its own October Surprise:
In it, “Organizing For America” workers in Connecticut and New Jersey (and a director in Texas) directly abet voter fraud.
To evidence like this, the defenders of the status quo bleat “you have no convictions!” – ignoring the fact that we do, and it’s the wrong measure, as our system’s laws are design by people whose main goal is to (let’s be idealistic here) jam warm bodies into the polls on the assumption that “high voter turnout” is a good goal in and of itself. (More cynically? Well, you know where I’m going with that, don’t you?)
…when we’ve got Red Squirrel from the eponymous Red Squirrel Report:
I grew up in the 1970’s, so I got some of my learnin’ every Saturday morning from ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock…Last Friday, the government told us that the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%, even though they do not count millions of people who are too frustrated to even look for a job anymore. I think this country needs the folks at Schoolhouse Rock to explain the unemployment rate to the American people. Something catchy, similar to Conjunction Junction.
How about……..Frustration Nation? C’mon kids, sing along:
He’s got lyrics and everything.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I’ve changed my mind. Benghazi was not a terrorist attack.
Terrorism is a tactic. The purpose of terrorism is to create terror in a population. The intended result is the population capitulates to the aggressor rather than continue to suffer terrifying attacks.
More below the jump.
The Good News: Esquire has named Mila Kunis “the Sexiest Woman Alive”.
Now, titles like that always made me wonder; do they wait until the previously reigning “sexiest woman alive” dies, relinquishes her throne, or gets un-sexy? Or do they kill off last year’s winner?
Anyway – the bad news: Kunis has that deep-down ugly:
“The way that Republicans attack women is so offensive to me,” Kunis exclaims. “And the way they talk about religion is offensive. I may not be a practicing Jew, but why we gotta talk about Jesus all the time? And it’s baffling to me how a poor person in Georgia can say, ‘I’m a Republican.’ Why?”
Esquire is to politics as Vogue is to hunting, of course.
So to go out on the good news:
Nobody cares what Mila Kunis thinks about politics.
This morning, we addressed Aaron Brown’s look at HD6B, up on the Iron Range, where political newcomer Jesse Colangelo is running a helluvva race against DFL/union kommissar Jason Metsa.
Today – some older but equally intrigueing news that I just haven’t had time to get to; there is one precinct in Saint Paul that is ever-so-close to voting Republican.
The Pioneer Press’ Frederick Melo reported on this a few weeks back:
The intersection of Cretin and Selby avenues is the heart of Ward 4, Precinct 6, a precinct that, like the other 96, mostly has long favored Democrats in local, state and national elections.
But in this precinct, Republicans have managed to trim the Democrats’ lead by larger and larger numbers in the past 10 years and even chose Republican Sen. Norm Coleman over Democratic challenger Al Franken in 2008.
Looking at the results at the SOS site, it’s one precinct where Tony Hernandez’ 2010 campaign came within eighit votes of Senator Dick Cohen.
Read the whole fascinating thing, assuming you didn’t a few weeks ago
And then ask yourself – if a precinct in a moldy blue one-party city like Saint Paul – aka Pyongyang on the Mississipi – turns red, what does that mean?
I mean, the fall of the Soviet Union started with protests in Gdansk – the Thunder Bay of the Baltic.
From small things, big things one day come.
(Optimistic? If you’re not fundamentally an optimist, then there’s no point in being a Republican in St. Paul).
Nick Coleman – the same one that used to sneer down his patrician mainstream-media nose at all of us villein bloggers – is blogging up a storm these days.
He Who Knows Stuff has some advice for A-Klo:
Amy Klobuchar has been working hard to win the endorsement of Republican car dealers, like the ones featured in her campaign ad at the end of this post. But she hasn’t done so well impressing Minnesota progressives who are wondering why the state’s Senior U.S. Senator hasn’t been an outspoken opponent of the two heavy-handed Republican-forced constitutional amendments on the Nov. 6 ballot.
The car dealer ad is pure AKlo — a “She’s the Senator for All Minnesota!” ad about as sharp as mush in a bowl.
She’s sharp enough to know that her popularity – sky-high though the polls show it to be – is the same kind that Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan used to have in North Dakota. Klobuchar is smart enough (or advised by people smart enough to know) that Minnesota is a purple state, that Barack Obama’s going to have all the coattails of a string bikini, and that she needs to shut up and make nice with everyone and not stick her neck out for anything.
Especially to oppose one amendment that, win or lose, will pin a negative on her, and another one that’s going to win by 3:2 even if the GOP doesn’t smoke the DFL on turnout.
There’s not much there, there with Amy Klobuchar. But she’s not that dumb.
Coleman:
The question is: Do Hugely Popular Politicians Still Have an Obligation to Try to Make a Difference?
Heh. Coleman apparently thought Klobuchar was Paul Wellstone, Politicians measure “obligations” as closely as engineers measure bridge gussets (which, if memory serves, Nick’s got some trouble with. And memory does indeed serve).
Part of me isn’t sure that Coleman meant this next passage exactly as it sounds. Part of me – the part that reads phrases like “do popular politicians have an obligation to make a difference” – thinks he means it exactly as written. And the third part of me really really hopes he meant it exactly as it sounds (emphasis added):
And both, at this point, seem likely to pass, in part because there is confusion among many Democrats as to how they should vote.
Are Democrats really such lemmings, or does Nick Coleman really think that’s all they are?
(Note: Requests to speak to Klobuchar, as well as to officials of her campaign, received no response).
Hey! Just like all us regular bloggers!
We’ve had two stories in the past few weeks about traditionally-DFL sinecures softening up, bit by bit.
The first was yesterday; Aaron Brown notes that HD6B – the post-redistricting home of Iron-Range DFL political statue Tom Rukavina – has seen the local paper endorse the Republican challenger, nurse and political newcomer Jason Colangelo, over career DFL/union Jason Metsa:
Aaron “Minnesota” Brown:
In all likelihood, this race will fall easily to Metsa.
But I’m going to keep an eye on 6B because Colangelo has done well in winning over some notable support thus far…Last week he received a remarkably enthusiastic endorsement from the Duluth News Tribune and I predict that editor Bill Hanna is cooking up an epic Mesabi Daily News endorsement for Colangelo after the MDN bludgeoned Metsa before his August primary win over Lorrie Janatopoulos.
Colangelo might be green, but he is following a playbook that I’ve always considered the GOP’s best chance on the Range — unabashedly pro-union, some fairly reasonable ideas for an expanded Range economy, all while preserving the GOP base on social issues. Enough to win? Not likely this year, but if Colangelo “beats the spread” on this one we could a more competitive challenge from him in the future, provided he can handle the heat of increased scrutiny.
This, in “normal” times in Minnesota, is unthinkable.
But these aren’t normal times. Brown:
But if Rep. Chip Cravaack’s attempt to turn the Range GOP red with a tent revival of mining politics works, watch out here.
And there are rumors filtering down from the Range that Cravaack’s strategy is hitting paydirt in some unexpected places.
More as those rumors get more substantial.
More at noon.
If you’re in Saint Paul this evening, stop by the Hernandez for Congress Taco Fiesta, from 5-8PM.
It’s at 2028 Dayton Avenue in Saint Paul:
Come on over! Suggested donation is $30 – or feed the whole family for $40!
Here’s the lefty playbook when it comes to exacting more tribute from the people:
It’s the way a petulant teenager acts when they don’t get their way.
It’s the choice Saint Paul Public Schools superintendent Valeria Silva has given the voters of Saint Paul.
And it’s worse than that. Greg Copeland, chair of “Vote NO 30% Levy Tax Hike!”, writes:
“The St. Paul School Board majority, following the recommendation of the Superintendent, showed so little respect for St. Paul Voters that it chose to combine the expiring 2006 Levy Renewal with a 30% Levy Property Tax Hike in a single ballot question, rather than giving voters an open choice of two questions, as it easily could have done; one to renew and another on the proposed 30% levy property tax increase.”, said Copeland.
There are so many angles to this story.
Blackboard Fodder: Teachers union members are among the most reliable Democrat voters out there.
But when every single bureaucracy that emjploys them uses this exact same tactic – using their jobs as bargaining chips, and never, ever touching the admin jobs that are the district’s greatest sacred cow – I have to wonder; don’t teachers ever get tired of it?
Do they all suffer from Stockholm Syndrome?
Mush, Sled Dogs!: I’ve been a Saint Paul taxpayer for a quarter of an endless freaking century now. Near as I can remember, the Saint Paul Public Schools have gotten every single levy increase they’ve ever asked for. And yet the schools never get anything but worse.
The district is under the impression that the few remaining businesses and residents that actually pay taxes are like ATMs with no limit.
We are not.
In the immortal words of Little Steven, “I’m getting tired of paying for sh*t I never get / Somebody promised justice, and they ain’t delivered yet”.
Subsidizing Failure: And yet the schools get worse and worse. The efflux of families, especially lower-income and immigrant families, to charter, parochial and suburban schools has ripped a minimum of 12% out of the district’s population (and many of the families are putting their money where their mouths are, and leaving the city).
And while some of the marquee schools – the ones that serve the white upper-middle class children of the more-connected government workers in Saint Anthony Park and Desnoyer and Highland are more or less adequate and make most of the right noises on command, the SPPS has among the worst achievement gaps in the US.
The Saint Paul Public School District is a failed venture. Since it is a wholly-owned arm of the St. Paul DFL, it is in every way a symptom of the failure of one-party rule in Saint Paul. If it were a business, it would go out of business. If it were a regulated business, it would be shut down by the government. If it were a charter school, the Department of Education would padlock it and MN2020 would wrinkle its organization nose and write a snarky “white paper” on what a crappy idea it was.
But Superintendent Silva and the School Board – loyal DFLers all – are doing what they do every time the levy comes up; holding guns to the teachers’ heads, and saying “pay up or the teachers get it”.
Call it “Valeria’s Choice”.
The people of Saint Paul need to send our worthless, incompetent school district a message; do a better job, or (heh) get out of the way and give the job to someone who can.
The US Center for Narrative Control is battling a deadly outbreak of Scrutonium.
Iowahawk reports from the front lines.
The left and media (PTR) was skipping and gamboling about like happy little meerkats yesterday; a new PPP poll showed – as PPP polls tend to do – nothing but good news for Minnesota Democrats.
In an automated phone survey of 937 likely MInnesota voters, they found…:
PPP’s newest poll on Minnesota’s amendment to ban gay marriage finds it running slightly behind, with 46% of voters planning to support it and 49% opposed.
That represents a 4 point shift compared to a month ago when it led for passage 48-47.
The poll claims that the major movement has been among indies and women.
“The marriage amendment in Minnesota continues to look like a toss up,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Voters are very closely divided on the
issue.”
Well, we more or less knew that.
Then, they addressed the other Constitutional Amendment:
When we polled on it in June it was leading for passage by a 58/34 margin. By September that had tightened to a 56/39 advantage. And now it’s leading only 51/43. Democrats are now even more opposed to the voter ID amendment (23/71) than they are to the one on
marriage. And although independents continue to support it their 52/41 favor for it is down a good deal from 62/33 a month ago. This fight may end up a lot closer than people
initially expected.
Or it may not.
We’ll come back to that one.
They also put the DFL up substantially on a “generic legislative ballot”, which would be big news if voters voted for a generic legislature. They don’t, of course.
As always, the devil is in the turnout model:
Here it is, buried deep in a set of crosstabs:
That’s D+9. Not as far out as the D+13 we got from the Strib a while back, but it still higher than 2008.
That’s especially interesting compared to this other bit of crosstabbery
:
So Democrats outnumber Republicans 38/29, but conservatives outnumber Dems 37/34?
At any rate – the polling services continue to put out (if you look hard enough for them) polls with turnout models that, when you ask them, they are are legitimately what they’re encountering out there…
…but do not in any way pass the sniff test.
And the media?
Well, they just shovel it on out there. It’s just the topline number that really matters. Right?
Gallup’s chief economist calls BS on last week’s “big unemployment drop”:
While the payroll survey of businesses and government showed just 114,000 net new jobs created, the household survey showed a jobs boom, and it’s the latter which is used to calculate the unemployment rate. [Gallup Chief Economist Dennis] Jacobe:
“The problem is that even though the Household survey tends to be very volatile, this decline seems to lack face-validity, particularly after the prior month’s numbers. The consensus estimate was that the government would report that the unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.1% in September. GDP growth was 1.3% in the second quarter and seems to be no better this quarter. The government’s Establishment survey shows there were 114,000 new jobs created in September — very close to the consensus of 113,000 — and not sufficient to lower the unemployment rate.”
In other words, the numbers aren’t doctored; they’re just invalid.
“A quick comparison of the government’s seasonally adjusted and unadjusted employment data seems hard to reconcile with the weak economy. For example, the government shows the number of employed workers increasing by 775,000 in September from August on an unadjusted basis. This surge in hiring seems surprisingly large given the current economy, not to mention the even larger adjusted increase of 873,000. Similarly, the number of unemployed declined by 954,000 in September on an unadjusted basis. This is reduced to a smaller adjusted decline of 456,000 — but both numbers are also surprisingly large.”
His bottom line: “The Household results should be discounted. … The obvious conclusion is that a new employment measure is needed.”
Now, as Ed and I discussed on the show over the weekend, if the Household Survey was an outlier in September, it’s entirely likely that the next jobs report, due on November 2, will correct it, showing a sizeable jump in unemployment. If that’s the case, it won’t be a jump, naturally – just the numbers returning to where they should have been in the first place.
It’ll be just as dishonest for conservatives to make hay out of that as the liberals are to try to do the same with last Friday’s number.
And I”ll remind conservatives of that fact.
On November 7.
There is a short list of people who genuinely, truly inspire me. Ernest Shackelton, we’ve talked about. Stanislaus Schmajzner is coming up shortly. Lech Walesa will get an article soon.
But today would have been the 132nd birthday of Eddie Rickenbacker.
And if you’ve never heard of him, join the club. And yet in his day – and he had a long day – he may have been the ultimate manifestation of what it meant, and means, to be an American.
Rickenbacker was born in Edward Rickenbacher, in 1890, in a poor neighborhood in Columbus Ohio, the son of Swiss-German immigrants. His father died when he was 13; in his autobiography, Rickenbacker said it was an accident; one of his biographers claimed the elder Rickenbacher died after a fight. Young Eddie left school after seventh grade, working a long series of odd jobs, including a job in a foundry. He discovered an aptitude for mechanics, as well as a desire to learn, even taking a corresondence course in engineering.
He supplemented his informal and semi-formal education with lucky bits of practical experience; he told the story of encountering a broken-down car out on the road, with its driver, completely flummoxed by the breakdown. Rickenbacker had never worked on a car – but he took his correspondence-school engineering and natural mechanical aptitude and figured the problem out, and got it back on the road – and left him with the car bug at a time when cars were what the Personal Computer would be in about 1975; a toy of the very wealthy.
Rickenbacker, early in his racing career, at the wheel of a “Firestone/Columbus” racer. In those days, race cars carried on-board mechanics – partly to fix things, partly to counterbalance the car on tight turns.
Rickenbacker went from an accidental tinkerer to a salesman to, in very quick succession, a race car driver. Staring with the American branch of Peugeot, he quickly went over to the Maxwell team, back in the days when race car drivers were like extreme sports celebs today, barnstorming around the country and racing in cobbled-together tracks, in the days long before drivers wore helmets, much less roll bars. Rickenbacker raced in four Indianapolis 500 races back in the late oughts and the early teens.
Rickenbacker, at the wheel of a “Blitzen Benz”, in which he set a land speed record in the Teens. I didn’t mention that he held a land speed record, did I? Yep. That too.
He got into aviation the same way he got into cars; he happened upon a barnstorming aviator who’d had mechanical problems; he traded some mechanical help for a ride in the plane. And again, he was hooked. The pilot, fatefully, turned out to be T.F. Dodd, who became one of the pioneers of American military aviation, and served as the top aviation officer for the American Expeditionary Force in World War I.
Around then, World War I broke out. Rickenbacker went to Britain – ostensibly to race, but with an ulterior motive of finding ways to get into the fight. The British treated the celebrity – who at the time still spelled his name “Rickenbacher” – with suspicion, keeping him under surveillance as a potential German spy. He returned to America, believing war was imminent, and hatched a plan to recruit fellow race drivers – mostly daredevils and risk-addicts with strong mechanical aptitude – to serve as pilots.
When the US entered the war, Rickenbacker – he’d changed the spelling to make it look more American – joined the Army as an infantryman, but quickly parlayed his celebrity and his contact with Dodd into a job first as an engineering officer with the first of the US Army’s new fighter squadrons, the 94th Pursuit Squadron. He quickly wangled his way into a flight assignment (he had to roust up another engineer to take his job first).
Rickenbacker, by his first plane, a French-built Nieuport 17. The plane contributed to one of his many brushes with death. It was a very maneuverable plane – but prone to having the fabric skin of its upper wing rip off if it went too fast in a dive. Which it did, once, when Rickenbacker was trying to evade a German attack. He managed to coax the plane in for a landing – more or less miraculously.
And then he went on a tear, shooting down six German planes in his first month, becoming an “ace” (five kills), one of America’s first, before an ear infection – serious business in the days before planes were pressurized – grounded him for three months. He recovered and, promoted to captain and squadron leader, banged out 20 more confirmed kills by the end of the war, including two kills on his first day back in action. Most of the kills, as a matter of trivia, were among the hardest targets the German air service had to offer, the Fokker D-7 fighters that were at the time the best fighter plane in the air. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits (belatedly, in 1931), and remained America’s top fighter ace until World War II, where he was first passed by Marine and future South Dakota governor Joe Foss.
Rickenbacker’s Spad 13, the plane in which he ran up most of his score. Also built in France, the Spad was one of the better fighter aircraft of World War I.
He married his first and only wife, Adelaide, in 1922. Adelaide was something of a throw-forward; outspoken, independent, divorced and both opinionated and not averse to make sure people knew it, she and Rickenbacker were married for the next 51 years, ’til Rickenbacker’s death in 1973.
The Rickenbackers, with their two adopted sons David and William.
In 1920, capitalizing on his fame but driven by an urge to build a better mousetrap, he founded the Rickenbacker Motor Company. The company’s goal was to build the most advanced cars on the market, incorporating the latest racing technology into passenger cars. The biggest advance – four wheel brakes. At the time, most cars had brakes on the two rear wheels; as a lifelong winter driver, I can only imagine how fun that must have been on the ice.
A 1923 “Rickenbacker Six”, serving as a pace car at the Indy 500. It was one of the most advanced cars of its era.
It was an era long before the auto market coalesced into a “big three” – there were dozens of manufacturers at the time – but the bigger manufacturers at the time engaged in an epic PR battle to try to squeeze Rickenbacker off the road – fearing, as Rickenbacker related it, that their own backlogs of two-wheeled-brake vehicles would be unsaleable.
A Rickenbacker sedan.
Rickenbacker Motor Company only lasted until 1927, but its legacy – the four wheel brake system, among many other advances – lives on today; most American auto makers adopted them within a few years. While the major auto makers squeezed Rickenbacker out of the business, they quickly offered him work; he served as a regional sales director for their “Sheridan”, “LaSalle” and “Cadillac” marques, as well as serving, ironically, as head of American distribution for Dutch-owned Fokker Aircraft, 11 of whose aircraft he’d shot down during the war.
Rickenbacker went on to buy the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, turning it into the national institution it is today (before shutting it down at the beginning of World War II). He sold it after the war, but it was during his ownership that many of the traditions of the storied race, and the Brickyard itself, were instituted.
It was via his ongoing interest in aviation that he persuaded GM to invest in “North American Aviation”. One of its subsidiaries, “Eastern Air Transport”, was a fledgling and failing airline; GM appointed Rickenbacker to take over the struggling carrier. He merged it with Florida Airways, turned it into one of the country’s major air carriers, and then arranged to buy the airline from GM in 1938.
It was around this time that Rickenbacker first delved into politics; although he never ran for office, he was an outspoken critic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, earning the ire not only of the administration but of much of the press; liberal media bias is nothing new. In 1934, he got into direct conflict with Roosevelt over the President’s decision to cancel all commercial air mail contracts and have the US Army Air Corps deliver the mail. Rickenbacker savaged this decision; when a number of Army pilots, untrained in all-weather cargo flight, were killed in accidents, Rickenbacker condemned the action as “legalized murder”; Roosevelt in turn ordered NBC radio to stop broadcasting Rickenbacker’s statements about Roosevelt.
Still, Eastern thrived.
On February 26, 1941, Eastern Flight 21, on approach to an airfield near Atlanta, crashed into a hillside. Rickenbacker, flying to Atlanta on business, was gravely injured – massive internal injuries, many broken bones and dislocated joints, and an eyeball popped out of its socket. He was trapped, immobilized, and – most frightening of all to Rickenbacker – soaked in aviation fuel. The plane and its survivors sat on the mountainside until morning before searchers found them. Although he’d spent the night encouraging the other survivors to hang on, Rickenbacker had passed out from shock and internal bleeding; he was initially left for dead, and taken off the hillside when the ambulance crews started hauling “bodies”. He was left for dead again at the hospital; his injuries looked unsurvivable. It wasn’t until a doctor noticed he still had a pulse that they worked on trying to save him, the better part of a day after the accident. The newspapers announced that he had been killed in the accident.
The crash scene. The DC3 – at the time, one of the most advanced passenger planes in the world – was landing for the second leg of a trip from DC to Houston.
It wasn’t the last time in his life that they’d have to retract that story.
In his autobiography, Rickenbacker described the scene – and his battle to stave off death – with riveting intensity. He felt death calling to him – not for the first time in his life, naturally – and described the internal, mental battle to hold on, by far the most intense of his many brushes with death. He was in the hospital for months, and took the better part of a year to get his eyesight completely back. There were eight dead and eight survivors.
While he was recuperating, World War II began. Rickenbacker wanted to fly again – but between his injuries and the usual fifty-year-old stuff, he knew he wasn’t in the game in that way anymore. He visited flight schools, inspected pilots and aircraft, and lent his name and his expertise to the Air Force as it got ready to go fight. And as US forces went into action around the world, he visited – partly as a morale-builder, partly because of his own vast technical knowledge of aircraft.
It was on one of these missions that Rickenbacker had another brush with death. On an inspection tour of bases in the Pacific, and carrying a message from President Roosevelt to General MacArthur in Australia, Rickenbacker’s plane – a B17 Flying Fortress – was en route to a planned fuel stop on Canton Island in the central Pacific. A defect in a damaged navigational instrument caused the crew to fly the plane hundreds of miles off course; they ran out of fuel in the middle, almost literally, of nowhere. The plane “ditched” – carried out an emergency landing in the ocean – and the plane’s crew of six, Rickenbacker and his assitant, all of them injured to one degree or another (and with Rickenbacker still walking with a cane and very much still hurting from the plane crash) climbed aboard three small life rafts.
After a few days lost at sea, the newspapers again declared him dead. His wife prevailed on the Army and Navy not to give up the search.
The rafts’ emergency food supplies ran out after three days. Rickenbacker described their battle to survive; they soaked their clothing with water from passing rain showers, caught and ate raw fish and a small shark, and whatever came their way. In one memorable incident, when the fish gave out, Rickenbacker led the crew in a prayer for salvation – and a seagull landed on his head. He grabbed the hapless bird, killed it, and the crew ate it raw. One of the men died – but Rickenbacker led the crew to keep their spirits until, after 24 days floating at sea, a US Navy search plane found the rafts, on November 13 1942. They had drifted on the current for thousands of miles before being picked up near Tuvalu.
After the war, Rickenbacker continued running Eastern, making it the most profitable airline in the country for many years (he was forced out as CEO during a downturn in 1959, and spent the rest of his life as a conservative activist (who urged respect but caution for the Soviets, whom he’d visited extensively during the war). He wrote his biographpy, “Rickenbacker” in 1967 – I probably found it on my dad’s bookshelf when I was nine or ten years old – and clearly remember reading in the newspaper that Rickenbacker died of a stroke in 1973. For the first time, there was no retraction.
And Rickenbacker’s example, like those of Shackelton and Schmajzner – never, ever give up – has kept me going through an awful lot of much, much lesser trials.
But even when he wasn’t dodging, out-muscling and throwing the finger directly at death, Rickenbacker was an example for the ages. As we watch our school systems crumble, Rickenbacker was a classic example of the self-taught person, and of the power of a curious, agile mind to learn on its own. As a tireless businessman, he was perhaps one of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history – and had the conservative worldview to show for it.
And as the second-generation son of immigrants, he’s one of the greatest examples of what the American spirit should be.
It’s a crime that the story of his life isn’t required learning in our schools today. We’d be a better nation for it.
…than European liberals writing about American culture. It’s always a smorgasbord of stereotypes – both the stereotypes they see and write about, and the ones they themselves exhibit.
And both are on ample display in this piece in Britain’s Guardian by Ed Vulliamy about B.B. King’s annual concert in his hometown.
And yet mixed in and among all of that is a great look not only at King’s life – he’s 87 – and the South he came from as it’s evolved over his lifetime, but there are even a few looks into how he became the guitar player he’s been for all these years.
It’s more or less in sync with the upcoming release of the documentary The Life of Riley, about King’s life and impact on music (King’s birth name was Riley B. King). And that, I need to see, wherever it shows in the Twin Cities.
The Pioneer Press has opted not to give endorsements this year.
I suspect – and this is just a, er, shot in the dark on my part, pure speculation – that there are one or two reasons for this:
Again, the above is purely speculation. It’s only if I were to joke about or mock the ideas above that they would be ensured of being proven correct. [1]
Rather than endorsing 2nd CD representative John Kline, they opt merely to write about how completely he’s dominated the district, but how redistricting might make Mike Obermueller’s DFL bid a little more tenable than whoever it was that ran last time.
Two things, really:
SNL is funny again?: I dunno. I haven’t watched it in years. SNL follows a pattern;
We’re apparently in the #1 phase – or so I’m told. I’ve been burned too many times. I’m happy to be the last one on and the first one off that particular bandwagon.
Wait – they went after who? Lorne Michaels is among the most ossified paleo-libs in showbiz. The show will treat conservatives – any conservative – with sympathy right about the time Paul Krugman writes a NYTimes editorial admitting he’s a partisan hack who’s outside his depth writing about anything but currency policy. It’ll never happen.
But bagging on another media outlet? Well, OK – there, they can have some fun:
Not saying I’m going to watch SNL anytime soon. But that was fun.
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!
(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:
Join us!
I’ve had a list of people, for much of my talk radio career (including the first one, back in 1986-1987 at KSTP) of guests I’ve always wanted to interview. The list has grown and shrunk over the decades, but usually has been some variant on this one:
Tomorrow on the NARN, Ed and I will be interviewing one of them.
As I’ve said before, I’m ambivalent about the Marriage Amendment. I’m still not entirely sure how I’m going to vote on it.
But I did encounter the least convincing argument against the amendment of all the other day:
[Any amendment supporter] is teh heppocreet! They are teh divorced! How can they limit marriage for others when they don’t take their own vows seeriously? That is sucks!
This argument drips stupidity on almost too many levels to count. But I’ve built a bit of an unremunerated career cataloging stupidity that drips; it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.
There is a debate to be had about the Marriage Amendment. The Amendment’s opponents have largely done a terrible job of making that argument.
But this one is the dumbest of all.
Perhaps you’ve heard it on the news; notwithstanding dismal numbers in manufacturing and many other industries, and a rise in jobless claims, unemployment “dropped” last month.
We’ll come back to that.
———-
Each percentage point in the “unemployment” figures represent about three million workers, give or take (2.5, 2.7, whatever; lots of workers). Thus, a gain or loss of a full point in unemployment means somewhere between 2.5-3 million jobs, one way or the other.
A tent of a point, thus, means around 250-300 thousand jobs.
Now, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 114,000 new jobs were created last month which, all other things being equal and fudging up a bit means about a .04%.
The BLS also says that the workforce participation rate rose by .1%, to 63.6% of the labor force, up just a hair from a 30-year low. That means a net of roughly 250-300 thousand people returned to a work force…
…that didn’t even add enough jobs to account for the monthly growth in the population (we need to add 200,000 jobs a month just to break even).
My radio colleague Ed Morrissey notes:
The number of unemployed dropped 456,000 last month, while only 114,000 jobs got added. That either means that 342,000 people left the US, or they left the work force in one way or another. In the household survey, though, the number of people with jobs rose by 873,000 — a very strange outcome that makes it appear that more than one tweak has been done to previous data. (The +873K is in the seasonally adjusted number, by the way.)
Beyond that? As Ed also points out, the U6 unemployment rate – which includes the marignally-employed and part-time workers along with the traditional “unemployed” – has been holding rock-steady at 14.7% – roughly where it’s been all year long.
So to sum it up:
…but unemployment dropped by 800,000?
Does that mean 400,000 people got 20-hour-a-week jobs at McDonald’s or what?
I’m going to guess “or what”.
Where “Or what” means “the BLS is practicing Chicago Math the month before an election”.
UPDATE: Charlie Martin at PJM breaks it down. The economy added a slew of part-time jobs, enough to keep ahead of the 450,000 jobs lost. What that may show us, as Charlie says, is that it’s getting to be too expensive to hire employees full-time.
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:
New sign posted this week at the front entrance to Ramsey County Property Records and Revenue (the place where you file your deed and pay your taxes), located at 90 West Plato Blvd. It’s across the river from downtown.
The building sits on land owned by Ramsey County government and used for official government business.
The “guns banned” sign comes from Minn. Stat. 624.714, Subd. 17. That law allows posting by a private establishment controlled by a nongovernment entity and used for a nongovernment purpose. On its face, that law does not apply to the government office where the public comes to pay taxes.
Quiz of the day question: are guns banned in that building because of that sign?
Joe Doakes
Como Park
I’m going to guess that the building has some connection to the Ramco Court system, and can be legally posted. It’s the same technicality that the City of Minneapolis used to arrest Joel Rosenberg a few years back; even though he wasn’t in a “court” facility per se, the court system was involved with the building.
That’s just a hunch, and I can’t say as I’m going to line up to be the text case.
That being said, I’m going to shine the GOCRA signal on a passing cloud and hope a real gun-rights expert turns up…
The last round of Education Minnesota (the state’s biggest teachers’ union) TV ads includes one with an older guy (I can’t find the video online – perhaps EdMinn knows we’re lurking?) saying – paraphrasing closely here:
I support education. Even though my kids aren’t in school anymore. Even if I don’t have a lot of money for other things…this state built a great education system because people sacrificed…!
That’s a pretty slinky bit of rhetoric, there. Ingeniously manipulative.
Of course, the public school systems have never had more money – the Republicans have added plenty of money over the past two years, by the way, although with what result I can’t tell, and either can anyone else. And we do no have a great education system, not anymore. We have an adequate one, very good in some places, rotten to the core in others.
But what EdMinn is asking is for you, Joe Schlub Public, is to dig deep and sacrifice, for…
…for what?
For better schools?
The Teachers Union has very little to do with how your kids are actually educated. That’s between you and your school board. No, the teachers union pretty much exists to protect teachers from capricious firing and lousy work conditions (not a bad thing in and of itself) and keep adding to, or at least prevent subtraction from, the pay and benefits the unions have already exacted from the politicians they helped elect in the first place. They don’t write curricula. They don’t set education policy (directly).
What the ad is really telling Minnesotans is “we need you to sacrifice – like, work until you’re 70 – so that we can keep retiring with near-full-pay at 50”.
So pony up, all you lazy private sector serfs! Er, taxpayers!
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes in regard to a comment thread the other day about my issues with Apple maps (with emphasis added)…:
Sanity posted this comment to a prior post on SITD:
1. Sanity on October 2, 2012 at 9:26 pm said:
“. . . I don’t have a choice about who to buy electricity or water from. Those are regulated utilities because they have a monopoly. I do, however have the choice of buying an iPhone versus Samsung vs not buying a smart phone at all. Mitch chose to buy the Apple product, knowing that he is supporting a pro-gay rights company. I find that interesting.”
For crying out loud, how long does it take Sanity to do his shopping?
Let’s see, Fiber One or Fiber Plus? Hmmm, how to decide? Price? Fiber content? Taste?
No, that’s all irrelevant. How do their company executives feel about homosexuals – that’s the important thing! Fiber One is made by General Mills, which opposes the marriage amendment, meaning General Mills is Pro Gay. Okay, Fiber One it is.
Now, Land O’Lakes milk or Roundy’s?
Honestly, do people live like that? How can they stand to think that way?
Joe’s right – I mean, if a cell phone manufacturer advertised itself as “ambivalent about gay rights”, it’d be at least irrelevant to my purchasing decision (well behind “do the maps work?”), and most likely detrimental (I mean, not only is it unseemly, but marketing via social wedges is off-puttingly cynical).
But yes, Joe, people most definitely do live like that. And not just commenter “Sanity” (who is, I suspect, one of the “Penigma” hive). In fact, just about everyone is like that in one way or another.
I’m conservative. As a conservative, poitics aren’t the be-all and end-all of my life; it’s a hobby, like playing guitar or blogging. But my religious faith? That is important. It plays into the major, and most of the minor, decisions in my life. For example, in 12 years of being single a second time, I haven’t dated an atheist – or even anyone who’s not some variety of Christian. In something as vital as “a potential life partner”,. some sort of agreement on the basic nature and meaning of life is fairly vital.
As re the company that makes my cell phone? Not so much. As long as they don’t trade slaves or donate too promiscuously to Democrat and anti-liberty causes (as the company that used to own Pepsi, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell did for many years with their support for The Brady Organization – until a boycott from people like me got them to reconsider), I don’t really care.
For liberals, on the other hand? It’s a stereotype that politics are more important than religion for liberals – but stereotypes become stereotypes for a reason. In a dozen years on the dating market (more or less enthusiastically) I’ve never had a conversation with a self-identified liberalette go south over my religion, my taste in music or my choice of cell phone. But I have had three or four send me emails oozing horror when they discovered I was a conservative. “I could never date one of…you“, they say. Prodded, a few have replied to the effect of “because I think having some agreement on the basic nature and meaning of life is fairly vital”.
So even if all you have to go by is stereotype (as is the case with the commenter in question) and assume I oppose “gay rights” – I don’t, and have likely done more against anti-gay bigotry than most liberals anyway – it betrays one of the great aspects of the left-right culture clash; for conservatives, politics is a necessary evil, a chore you do for the greater good, like cleaning the septic tank, so you can get to what matters.
For liberals, politics and its attendant optics and messaging and symbology – let’s call it “liturgy” – are the point.
The commenter in question needs to remember that.
Also learn basic logic.
Yesterday we published the now-infamous (albeit still ignored-by-the-MSM) video of Barack Obama’s Kanye-West-like speech to a group of African-American activists about the racism tied to the aid to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
As Paul Mirengoff notes, not only was it racist, it was completely false:
Obama’s claim was false. A few weeks before Obama gave his Hampton speech, Congress had waived the Stafford Act in connection with $6.9 billion in federal aid for New Orleans.
But it gets worse for Obama. Neo-neocon points out that Obama was one of 14 Senators who voted against the waiver of the Stafford Act. So not only was Obama’s complaint false, it was one he would have lacked standing to raise, given his vote on the issue.
Now, Obama voted against the Stafford Act waiver because it was part of a bill providing funds for the war effort in Iraq. Apparently, Obama’s desire to make sure the surge failed and we lost to al Qaeda in Iraq trumped his concern for the good people of New Orleans. Or maybe it was all posturing, Obama’s specialty, since he knew the money would go to Iraq and the Stafford Act would be waived regardless of how he voted.
Perhaps Obama should have voted “present.”
I suggest all of the above, plus the fact that being a Democrat in Chicago means never being accountable to anyone.
Of course, the mainstream media does their best to keep that going nationally. It’s just gotten a lot harder to do that.
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