Joe Doakes from Como Park emaill:

Having lost “the most important election ever,” what should we expect? Not hysteria, but reasonable expectations, what’s coming next?

Marriage – the Hennepin County lawsuit will succeed. Gay marriage will be imposed on “equal protection” grounds. Immediately thereafter, Somali Muslim immigrants will file suit demanding plural marriages be recognized on the same grounds. The Archbishop should tell Catholic priests they are forbidden from performing civil marriages, they can perform religious marriages only, for which the parties must obtain a civil marriage elsewhere, to establish that the Church doesn’t discriminate against gays or Muslims and can’t be forced to perform marriages for them.

Elections – descendants of European Caucasians will continue to dwindle as a percentage of the population, being out-produced by births and immigration of minorities who bring the values of their former societies to ours, transforming our nation to theirs. Third-world election results will become standard.

Pistols – gun control advocates will push the UN Small Arms Treaty as an excuse to prohibit the sale of all pistols. President Obama will appoint Supreme Court justices who will decide the right to possess a pistol in the home for self-defense does not imply a right to acquire one or carry one outside the home or buy ammunition for one. The Court also will hold that crime detection and prevention requires every pistol owner to have the same government permission as a fully-automatic machine gun and uphold unlimited taxes on ammunition. Pistol owners should buy one or two pistols to turn in when the cops come, but hide one or two for use during natural disasters or riots, making sure to keep 9mm or .40 S&W pistols to ensure compatibility when theft from the military and law enforcement becomes the only source of ammunition.

Jobs – if you have one, do whatever it takes to keep it, there won’t be more created anytime soon. Expect your employer to drop your health insurance when the crowding-out effect of Obamacare makes the health insurance business unprofitable.

Foreign Policy – the United States will continue its ever-expanding bombing campaign in Africa but Muslim terrorists will continue to sting us, at home and abroad. The European Union will dissolve leaving its member states to fend for themselves. Several will default on their debts, elect new governments, adopt new currency and hope for the best. China will take the Spratley Islands oil fields from Japan and the United States will talk tough but do nothing to annoy our largest creditor.

Federal Budget – Democrats controlling Congress will raise tax rates on disfavored groups but the slow economy, declining workforce and Baby Boomer retirements will prevent tax rate increases from generating enough revenue to solve the Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare debt problems. The Federal Reserve Bank will continue to buy at least a trillion dollars per year of federal government debt, since no other creditor will touch it.

Money – The rising tide of un-payable federal debt will convince other nations the dollar is devalued to the point of being worthless. One nation will decline to accept dollars in payment for oil, causing a stampede of other nations to follow suit, and some other nation’s currency will be adopted as the international standard (probably the Swiss Franc or the German Mark after the Euro disappears).

Stocks – Wall Street fund managers will decline to buy worthless government bonds but domestic investment opportunities will lag as taxes increase and overseas investment opportunities will disappear when the dollar becomes worthless. Stock portfolios will collapse taking down the pension funds and retirement accounts that have invested in them. Retirees will not be forced to eat cat food – they’ll be forced to eat their cats, as food. Prudent people will learn to garden, hunt and can.

Electricity – Democrats will ban coal as fuel for power plants. America’s aging nuclear plants will shut down one by one as permits for repairs become impossible to obtain. Natural gas fired plants and wind farms will not be able to carry the load. Roving brown-outs will become common. Blackouts following natural disasters will take longer to recover. Radical home retrofits to use only the power generated by solar, geo-thermal or backyard windmills will be touted but too expensive for average homeowner. Homes in cold climates will be abandoned as people migrate South to survive.

Quality of Life – The price of gasoline will skyrocket when dollars can’t be used to purchase foreign oil and our own oil production is decades away because Democrats have blocked permits to produce it. The price of imported goods will skyrocket when dollars are worthless beyond our shores but domestic goods will not replace them, there being no remaining domestic production and startups too heavily burdened by regulations. Health care providers will fail because of low Obamacare reimbursement rates and facilities will be taken over by government in the manner of GM and Chrysler. Treatment for sick people will exhibit all the convenience, access and compassion of the DMV or the IRS.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

I’ll be working on my own predictions before too terribly long here.

They differ from Joe’s only in degree, really.

The end was but hours away.  A small French force, numbering less than 50,000, took up a last-ditch defense; horribly outnumbered by the 1st & 7th German Armies crashing down upon them.  Even the Italian 4th Army was managing to swallow territory and POWs.  The French government radio broadcasts vainly tried to rally their people to the defense, but such cries fell on deaf ears.  The defeat was total.

Only this wasn’t June of 1940.  Nor was it the fall of the Third Republic.  Rather, the soldiers who fought and died on November 10-12, 1942 did so under the colors of the État Français or French State.  It was among the final chapters – but not quite the last – of the Vichy collaboration with the Nazis.

…

Defeat in 1940 had cost the French more than their freedom; it cost them their identity.

Hitler’s brutal terms of the June 22nd armistice stripped France of little actual territory – only the long fought over Alsace-Lorraine region changed hands (and even that wasn’t actually annexed).  Most of the northern half of the country, and the Atlantic coastal region, was deemed the “occupied zone”, allowing for German troops to remain stationed against any potential Allied invasion, but be civilly administered by the new French government based out of Vichy.

Petain assumes command. The Victor of Verdun immediately blamed democracy for the fall of the Third Republic and adopted a quasi-fascist government model

At the helm was a man hailed as a French national hero.  Marshal Philippe Pétain had rallied French troops amid the slaughter of Verdun in World War I and was widely credited at home as having turned the tide of the war against the Germans.  Pétain’s patriotism and anti-German credentials were seen as beyond question.  It was little wonder then that as Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned (his cabinet refused to support his intention of relocating the government to North Africa and continuing the war), Pétain was tapped to succeed him as PM.  At 84 years of age, Pétain took charge of a nation reeling from a shocking German offensive.  Six days into his government, with still more than half the nation free of German occupation, Pétain chose surrender to resistance.

His choice set the stage for the next 2 1/2 years.

(more…)

The economy is hurtling toward a fiscal cliff.

Not, not the January one.  Or not just the January one, anyway, although that’s gonna be ugly.  No, I’m talking about the Entitlement time bomb.  The one Romney and Ryan were at least serious about allaying, and that Obama is not – not in any way.

So what better to take the peasants’ minds off a gathering crisis?

A big sex scandal!

During the election campaign, Univision was the nation’s only credible media.  In four years, TMZ will be our news outlet of record.

It’s been a few years since I’ve taken any time away from blogging.  I took a solid week back in 2003, as I recall, and maybe a couple of days in 2008.   That’s about it.

And this election was a real meatgrinder.  No doubt about it.  The day job’s a ton of work, and I’m fighting a fall bug of some kind.

So posting – at least, posting from me – will be light the rest of this week. Now, Ringer may sound off at some point here, and we may get a letter from Doakes, and we may even have someone altogether different writing here shortly – long story.

But I’m taking the rest of the week off.  Pretty much.

See you on the air on Saturday, and the blog will be back for real on Monday.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

I think Republicans should send Paul Ryan around the country talking to Kiwanis and Women Of Today groups, starting tomorrow. He’s been vetted and has no skeletons. He can talk like a human: not too wonky, not too smarmy. He can pick three problems facing the nation and explain why it’s going to be a bitch to fix them but it’s got to be done and here’s how we need to do it. Face-to-face, he can rebut the mainstream media slander.

If Democrats learn of it and have a Clinton moment where they adopt our ideas and save the country – wonderful.

If not, we run Ryan next time and watch him steamroll Hilary.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

I’ve seen worse ideas.

I do politics – mostly amateur punditry, but some campaign and party volunteering as well – for the fun of it.  And, nights like last Tuesday notwithstanding, it is largely fun.  And necessary; someone’s got to beat back the orcs.

But if there’s one group in politics that largely annoys the piss outta me, it’s the mid-level professional operatives.  Usually young, usually poli-sci majors, usually doing a lot of thankless scutwork on campaigns, they remind me of radio people in many ways, most of them bad; like young radio and media people, they spend their formative years in a social vacuum, associating largely with people like them,.putting in grueling hours at jobs that send them all over the place frequently on no notice, never really having time or need to develop into well-rounded people with social skills or perspective out what I’ll euphemistically call “Applied Political Science”.

Don’t get me wrong; many of them are fantastic people.  I’m talking about the stereotype – which, like most stereotypes, does in fact exist.

And I’m going to guess a room full of those people are behind one of the Romney campaign’s most-complete meltdowns, one that may have cost him the election, or at least a much closer finish; the complete meltdown of “ORCA”, the campaign’s online get-out-the-vote system for the swing states.

ORCA was designed to centralize a job that is traditionally done by volunteers standing at check-in stands at polling stations with paper lists of reliable party voters.  As they check in, they are removed; as the day wears on, voters who haven’t showed up are contacted, cajoled, even driven to the polls.  ORCA intended to centralize the list, putting the “strike lists” online.

It crashed completely, utterly gutting Romney’s election-day GOTV effort:

In fact, Orca diverted scarce resources that would have been better used physically moving voters to polling places. By a rough calculation, Romney lost the election by falling 500,000 to 700,000 votes short in key swing states. If each of the 37,000 volunteers that had been devoted to Orca had instead brought 20 voters to the polls in those states over the course of the day, Romney would have won the election.

Now, did anyone in Romney’s inner circle have any experience with software engineering?  If they did, were they listened to?  The system’s beta test was election night!  This is a recipe – can I get an Amen, geeks? – for technological seppuku.

Before the election, there was much fear-mongering on the Democratic side about the Republicans’ supposed plans to suppress turnout among Obama voters. After the election, GOP strategist Karl Rove accused the Obama campaign of “suppressing the vote” by running a negative campaign against Romney that kept voters at home.

The truth is much worse. There was, in fact, massive suppression of the Republican vote–by the Romney campaign, through the diversion of nearly 40,000 volunteers to a failing computer program.

There was no Plan B; there was only confusion, and silence.

There’s an old adage in software development:  you can have your product cheap, fast, or with impeccable quality; pick two.  To be fair, we don’t know that ORCA was cheap, either.

Do I even need to say it?

Nationwide, it was a 50-50 election, aided by a media that gave up most pretense of legitimacy to play praetorian guard, and a turnout machine that was, frankly,pretty flawless.

It wasn’t helped by Romney’s campaign’s epic technical bobble – putting all its swing-state GOTV efforts into a technical basket that hadn’t even been stress-tested, and which failed miserably under pressure on election day.

But we held the US House.  Unlike 2008, Obama at least has a speed bump or two in his way.

As to Minnesota – well, Katie bar the door.  I’d bet on a budget over $40 billion, and taxes to match.  I’d also bet that Minnesota companies accelerate pushing their blue-collar operations across the borders to North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Mexico and points west.   We’ll still have lots of Fortune 500 companies here, in the same way New York has a lot of them.  But the people who do the building, manufacturing, servicing, warehousing, planning, programming?  These jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back.

The good news?  The Senate elected Dave Hann and some of his best Tea Party underclassmen to leadership – Dave Thompson, Roger Chamberlain and the like . The House leadership under Kurt Kaudt should be similarly aligned to – I hope, dear Lord, I hope – tell the DFL to go pound sand when they try to put a “bipartisan” veneer on their excesses.

After leaving this state with no significant tax hikes, a stable unemployment rate and no deficit, it should be a stark contrast with the state we see in two years.

…as in “Obama inherited all of Bush’s problems”, let’s make sure we’re clear on what the new DFL majority is going to inherit.

• No deficit – indeed, likely a small surplus, when the next forecast comes in.  Yep, accounting gimmicks, K-12 shift, yadda yadda, got it.  Still, it’s not “$6.6 Billion”.  Remember that?
• Low unemployment – among the lowest of any non-North-Dakotan state in the nation.

Place your best on where we’ll be in 2014.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

“Just sittin’ around drinkin’ with the rest of the guys

Six rounds bought, and I bought five.

Spent the groceries and half the rent.

I lack fourteen dollars of having twenty-seven cents”

  — “Dang Me” – Roger Miller

My Dad had that song on a LP record album we played on the Hi-Fi in the living room. It just came up on the iPod again.

I’ve heard that song for 50 years and never understood the lyrics. Now I get it – he’s so broke from drinking with his buddies that he’d need $14.00 just to end up with 27 cents. Makes perfect sense when you see the lyrics written out. (My son the math major says that means he’s $13.73 in the hole but I never was good at story problems and besides, it doesn’t rhyme).

50 years to get a joke. I wonder what else I’ve been missing.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It’s hard to come up with words – beyond the too-simple but thoroughly-heartfelt “Thank you” – for our veterans.

Most of what I need to say, I said on 9/11.  For those of you – to all of you in the audience who served on ships, subs, planes, tanks, cheeseboxes, or carried rifles, typewriters, cable spools or maps for trucks to follow in wars hot, cold and in-between over the past three generations – who spent the best years of your lives in uniform, thank you.

Check out Tribble News.

And don’t for get the Minnesota Warriors!

Minnesota’s official line is that we’re very, very proud of the fact that more of our people jam into the polls on election day than any other state.

OK, so far so good.

So I thought – why not take a look at some previous years?

The blue line shows the total turnout – the percentage of elegible voters that turn out for elections in (respectively) 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 (which is missing from the SOS website, and I didn’t want to extrapolate it, but you can assume it, like the other non-presidential years, is in the 50-70% range, for purposes of comparison), 2008, 2010 and last Tuesday.

The red line is the percentage of registered voters that vote.  It doesn’t seem counter intuitive; people who are registered to vote (and the numbers in every case are the “Registered as of 7AM on election day” numbers) are more likely to actually get down to the polls and pull the trigger.

Obvious pattern #1:  Presidential years are bigger for both figures.

But Monday, let’s look into where some of these numbers come from.

Let’s take a run back to 2008  The DFL controlled the legislature and everything else but the govenorship.

ME: “So, DFL – if you’re so hot for gay marriage, why don’t you pass a gay marriage bill?”

DFLers: “Because the Governor will veto it?

ME: “So?  Principle is principle!  If your voter base is so hot for gay marriage, why not put your stake in the sand, and make the GOP plant theirs?”

DFL:  “It’d be a waste of time”.

Fast forward to 2010:

ME:  “So, DFLers – see how the GOP pushes bills they believe in – everything from budget reforms to “Stand Your Ground” – so that the electorate knows who’s on what side of what issue, even though Governor Dayton is going to veto it?”

DFLers:  “Clearly you are a racist”.

Fast even further forward to Wednesday, when I pointed out to Minnesota Progressive Project ‘s Jeff Rosenberg that there was no chance on earth that the DFL was going to push gay marriage.  Partly because it’s worth more to them as a wedge.  Partly because they’ll take less electoral flak letting the courts do it.

Today?  I don’t wanna say “I told you so”.

No, I’ll let Jeff tell himself:

For those of us who want to see DFLers move decisively to approve equal marriage, there was disappointing news at a press conference held on Wednesday:

“Many Democrats, led by Gov. Mark Dayton, opposed the amendment. But on Wednesday they would not commit to overturning the law.

Senate DFL leader Tom Bakk of Cook said the state’s budget situation is so serious that he thinks any such policy decisions should be delayed. House DFL leader Paul Thissen of Minneapolis would not go that far, but agreed budget work must come first.

In a radio interview, even the most outspoken same-sex marriage opponent, openly gay Sen. Scott Dibble of Minneapolis, said he did not know if it was time to move forward with changing the law.”

Sorry, but saying that the budget must come first is a cop-out. The legislature can — and does — consider dozens of issues at one time. There will be over 110 DFLers in the legislature. Surely two or three of them can take some time to write the bill without taking away from work on the budget. Ater all, a bill to legalize same-sex marriage would probably only need to be a page or two long. It could be written, debated, and signed before the February economic forecast is available.

It could be six words long – “Son, you may kiss the groom” – and the DFL still won’t touch it.

Because gay marriage is worth a lot more to the DFL as a wedge issue than as a bunch of married gays.

The DFL – or, more realistically, the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, which does all the DFL’s thinking for it these days – needs to have lots of wedges to wave in front of the low-information, emotionally-manipulable audience that is its main source of voters.  And they’re going to need to conserve the ones they have, as the reality – “we just elected a high-tax, high-regulation bunch of government-worker-union stooges in the middle of a crap economy” – sinks in with Minnesotans.

Hey, Minnesotans!  Stop the hate!

The American people voted for Santa Claus.

If you work in the medical device business, energy, or many other American industires you may be getting a visit from his evil twin, “The Bill”, as companies start to announce layoffs.

I forget – did Nate Silver predict this, too?

From Parliament of Whores:

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat.

God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club.

Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He’s nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without the thought of quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

It was “Protect your lady parts” vs. “Er, that sure is a lot of debt to rack up with all those entitlements to pay”.

Two of the most annoying things about talking with liberals for this last three days (also last 15 years):

1. How many of them think the January “fiscal cliff” and sequestration are the real financial time bomb
2. How many of them, when asked what we do about all the debt Obama is racking up, and how much more of it he plans to rack up, seem to think that “Bush did it too!” is an answer.

Thank God – both the real one and O’Rourke’s – for the House of Representatives.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes to the Minnesota Bar Association:

To the Chairman:

The amendment to prevent gay marriage from being court-imposed on equal protection grounds, was defeated. Gay marriage is only a matter of time. Our statutes are mostly gender-neutral already, it won’t be hard to adapt to “spouse-spouse.” But after we substitute individual rights for Judeo-Christian tradition as our intellectual model for marriage, why should equal protection stop at two spouses?

A billion people live in plural marriages in Muslim nations. Minnesota has an active and growing Muslim population. Muslims in England and Canada have obtained government benefits for multiple wives on equal protection grounds. Why should equal protection stop at welfare benefits; why not all civil rights flowing from marriage, the same parade of horrors used to justify gay marriage?

Adapting the statutes for three spouses will be trickier than for two. Must the Senior Wife consent to adding a Junior Wife? Do the Junior Wife’s children receive less child support? When the Junior Wife divorces, does she get a third or only half of the Husband’s half? If one woman has two husbands, who pays child support? Who gets custody – the departing biological mother or the remaining primary caregiver?

Lawyers advise clients to make contingency plans; well, we should take our own advice. The Bar Association should establish a Plural Marriage Legislation Committee now, so we’re ready when the time comes. It’s only a matter of time.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

After all, why should be westerners be imposing our values on them?

And all those years we spent browbeating the H’mong out of child marriage?  What right did we have, really?

If two people – or five people, or one adult and a 13 year old girl – love each other, what right do we have to get in the way?

It’s about love, right?

To: The GOP Leadership In The Legislature, Whoever You End Up Being
From: Mitch Berg, Schnook Peasant
Re:  Upcoming Session

All,

It’s two months ’til what is going to be a couple of very grueling sessions.

Now, Governor Dayton is an addled bobblehead who is nothing but a marionette for Alida Messinger and the unions that bought the office for him.  Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen are not much but capos for two bodies that are, let’s be honest, more of the same.  Our entire legislature will be owned and operated by Messinger, the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, the unions, the non-profits, and the media that serves as their PR wing.

The calls will go out; “time to be “bi-partisan””.

Don’t do it.

The DFL will be trying their best to give an air of “bipartisan” legitimacy to what is going to be an orgy of tax-hiking and spending.

Resist the temptation to try to go for the Lori Sturdevant seal of approval.

They are going to plunge this state into an orgy of spending, an taxation to support it.  Major Minnesota business are going to ship jobs outstate or overseas as fast as FedEx can jam them onto the plane.  Minnesota’s medical device industry is already evacuating; there will be more to follow.

You need to keep your fingerprints away from the scene of the crime.

If the Minnesota GOP has proven one thing, it sucks at messaging.  You’ll need to learn it, and pronto – because the media will try to portray the upcoming disaster as “a result of GOP intransigence”, notwithstanding their complete control over government for the next (sigh) two years.

Tim Dolan is retiring as Minneapolis’ police chief.

He plans to become an advocate for making honest, law-abiding citizens easier victims for criminals.

No, really:

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan, who retired Friday after six years as chief, said he’ll spend some of his newfound spare time doing volunteer work for “reasonable” gun control groups.

“It’s always been a passion of mine,” he said of gun control. “I worked at it quite a bit as chief, and there’s a lot of work still to be done.”

It’s tempting to say “there’s no such thing” as a “reasonable gun-control group”.  Of course, that’s untrue.  This is one group that advocates for gun laws that stress keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

It’s the National Rifle Association.

Is that the “reasonable gun control group” that Chief Dolan is talking about?

Dolan said he plans to help the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, D.C., the Joyce Foundation in Chicago and a local group, Protect Minnesota: Working to End Gun Violence.

The Brady Campaign and the Joyce Foundation are famous for trying to drum up junk “science” against civilian firearm ownership.  As to “Protect Minnesota” – a group that has to change its name every five years when even the media start realizing what they are.  Their leader, Heather Martens, has never, not even once, said a substantial true thing about the subject of guns.  Not a single one.

Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota, said she met with Dolan on Wednesday at his office to discuss what he will do for her group.

“I think, basically, he will be a resource on gun policy … and give feedback on legislation,” Martens said. “He has always been a voice for preventing gun violence.”

Given Martens record, one might conclude Dolan has personally committed dozens of murders.  But we won’t go quite that far.

Sorry, Chief.  Your post-retirement activities will enable, not prevent, crime.

Jeff Rosenberg is one of the few bloggers at Minnesota Progressive Project that doesn’t deserve to be under either police surveillance, court-ordered commitment, or both.

But that doesn’t mean he gets how Democrat politics works:

 The very first thing they should do, though, is officially legalize same-sex marriage.

The vote against marriage discrimination was historic. It was uplifting. And it came amidst a number of other wonderful victories for the LGBT community and its allies. But if you’ll forgive me for saying so mere hours after this historic victory, it’s not enough. Not discriminating against same-sex couples any more than we already do just doesn’t cut it. It’s time for full equality, and there has never been a better opportunity.

Somewhere out at Alida Messinger’s estate, a DFL organizer – a union guy, maybe, or one of Alida’s hired fixers with ABM – is saying two things to himself right about now:

• “Alida looks a lot like the bass player for “Sweet”, circa 1974″.
• “Jeff! Bubbie!  Slow down!  Not so fast!”

Like abortion, gay marriage is an issue that serves the Democrats (and parts of the GOP) better unresolved.

The DFL – and Democrats nationwide, as yesterday’s election showed – run, and win, on selling victimization.

If gays – who are a percent or two of the population that votes reliably Democrat – ever stop howling “Why can’t we get married?”, they might start howling “why can’t we find a job” or “why are our taxes so damn high?”

Oh, the courts may settle it for us.  But the legislature?  Forget about it.

Well, the voters spoke.

A thin majority said “give me things I want, and make someone else pay for it!”.

Message received.

Biggest Winners

• Government Dependents:  Government workers, public employees union members, clients of all types who live off of wealth generated by others?  You’ve got four years of party time.
• The Media:  The media, in Minnesota and elsewhere, compiled a shameful record in this past election.  From CBS spiking the story that President Obama knew Benghazi was a terror attack almost from moment one to the Minnesota press’ silence on the local consequences of Obamacare’s medical device tax (which is shipping jobs to India via FedEx even as we speak) to its complete pass on Mark Dayton’s past, his record, his mental health and the people who support him, the press found its new purpose.  It may be dying on the open market – but the media still has a role; the Democrats’ Praetorian Guard.  The media polling and “fact check” industries, in particular, dropped all pretense of “journalism” and became unvarnished cheerleaders for the left.
• Plutocrats And Their Lackeys:  Make no mistake about it – Minnesota’s biggest winner last night was Alida Messinger.  They won by pouring bottomless pits of money – inherited from robber barons and extorted from employees alike – into gulling…
• Low-Information Voters:  From the lefty tweeps who babbled about “Romney’s Tax Returns”, to Sandra Fluke’s whinging about a non-existant war on women, to every single voter that still believes the economy is George W. Bush’s fault – and there were many of them – last night was a resounding victory for remedial America.

Biggers Losers

• Atlas:  The parts of America that actually produce things – from the Minnesota Third Congressional District, where Erik Paulsen crushed Brian Barnes, and the Sixth, where Michele Bachmann seems to have held off a well-funded challenger with hair that defies physics – to the entire US-281 corridor from North Dakota down through Texas, the parts of America and Minnesota that actually create wealth, productivity, energy, are going to be hamstrung with ever-more-onerous regulations and ever-higher taxes.  We are one chamber of Congress away from being France.
• Our Grandchildren:  My three grandchildren, between them, are $650,000 in debt. So far.  And, by the way, counting. Have a great life, kids.
• Freedom:  P. J. O’Rourke – who’d be rolling in his grave today if he were dead – once said conservatives see freedom in terms of speech, religion, press, assembly, association, thought.  Liberals see it as the freedom to wave their privates about and be free of consequences.  Expect Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security to become an even more-egregious enforcer of political correctness disguised as safety.
• Grassroots Politics: This race was a huge win for big-money out-of-state interests over home-grown candidates with grass-roots support.  When the brilliant Stacey Stout, who knocked every single door in her open district twice, can lose to a toxic stiff like Peter Fischer, who campaigned like his mother-in-law’s life depended on it and was supported only by a wave of out-of-district money, you know there’s a problem.
• The Victims of Benghazi And Juarez: The truth about both of these episodes – a cynical election-eve cover-up and an even more cynical use of government power to prop up Administration social policy that backfired, killing hundreds – will be that much longer in coming out.
• The Entire American Ideal:  This nation was once a “free association of equals”.  No longer.  Today, the US is “a group of managed outcomes”.
• Our Future:  It’s virtually inevitable that the US will now charge blithely over the fiscal cliff, without even the faintest bit of interest at the executive and half the legislative level.  At least Greece and Spain had a Germany to run to to ask for a bailout.  Who does the world’s largest economy ask for help?  Read up on your Weimar German history if you’re missing the point, here.

Word has been making the rounds that Obama plans to declare victory late this afternoon – long before the polls even start closing on the East Coast.

If it happens, it’ll be an attempt to do what the Big Three Networks tried to do for Algore in 2000; declare victory early enough to discourage Republican voters in the Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones.

If you are a Real American, you need to make sure your Republican relatives know what’s up.  This is way too important to leave to chance and the ministrations of our in-the-bag major media.

The Democrats and the media – and yes, let’s cut the crap and recognize they are indistinguishable – will do whatever it takes to finagle a victory for The One.

Bandwagoneering?  That’s nothing.

Brad Carlson and I will be on the air tonight, live at the GOP Victory Party at the Bloomington Hilton (494 and France).

We’ll be on the air until 11PM or whenever the election is called – whichever comes last.  We’ll be covering nationwide and local elections.  Tune in for the best election coverage anywhere in the Twin Cities!

I couldn’t resist:

I was 234th through the polling line in St. Paul Ward 4 Precinct 14. Turnout was moderate, maybe a little lighter than I’ve seen; I remember it being much heavier at the same time of the day back in 2008 and especially 2004.

I voted GOP down the line, as promised; Romney/Ryan, Bills, Hernandez, Karschnia, Lipp.

I also voted Yes on Voter ID (doy) and on Marriage, for the reasons I explained yesterday.

The media tells us it can’t be done. Obama is inevitable.

Where have we heard that before?

I’m on my way to the polls.

Nate Silver says it’s all over, and that all us bitter, gun-clinging Jebus freaks should just shut up, go home, and be happy to pay more for a bigger USA.

And I thought…:

(Audio NSFW)

XOXO,

An Uppity Peasant