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• I’ll be in from 1-3PM.   We’ll be talking with some representatives from the Patriot Ride, benefitting our state’s veterans.  Then, we’ll be talking with Siri Free, Miss Minnesota, as she gets ready to help crown a new Miss Minnesota!
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Depending on who you believe, the DFL apparently traded away a minimum wage bill for money to restore the building they see as their clubhouse the State Capitol.

I stress the “depending on who you believe” bit, since I’m not entirely sure they even know themselves.

Or maybe it’s just me.  Anyway – I read the story in the Joyce-Foundation-supported © MinnPost, and it seems a little confusing.

The piece, by James Nord, starts out by noting (I’ll add emphasis) that…:

DFL Rep. Ryan Winkler and two Republican legislators who declined to speak on the record say Senate leaders came to a deal that secured a bonding bill for Capitol repairs and ensured an orderly end to the session in exchange for no action on those two policy provisions.

Winkler, the chief House sponsor of the minimum wage legislation, said Republican lawmakers told him of the deal. He described his understanding of it to the Star Tribune just after the session ended May 20.

No, you need not link to the Strib; I’ve done it for you. Here’s Winkler’s quote:

 Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley said leaders in his own party ditched a proposed minimum wage increase to accomplish other priorities.

“Senator Bakk agreed with the Senate Republicans not to pass a minimum wage bill and not to pass the bullying bill, in order for them to agree to support a bonding bill to restore the State Capitol building,” said Winkler, who heard the same story of the deal from House Republicans.

But – back to the Joyce-Foundation-supported © MinnPost, now – later in the Nord piece, Winkler says:

Winkler told MinnPost that he was standing next to House Speaker Paul Thissen at the speaker’s rostrum when Minority Leader Kurt Daudt told Winkler about the agreement…Thissen said in an interview that he had heard about a supposed deal but didn’t have any specific knowledge of it. He hadn’t discussed the issue with Bakk or Hann.

When asked about the diverging stories, Winkler responded, “Well, that may not have been a deal, but all the Republicans believe it was a deal. One way or another, somebody’s misinformed.”

This past session was replete with stories of how the various factions in the DFL were disjointed, how the left hand didn’t know what the farther-left hand was doing.    Especially amusing were the stories about how very, very badly Paul Thissen and Tom Bakk hate each other, and what a hard time they had working together.

But a legislator appearing to disagree with himself?  That’s a new one even for me.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails in re the Wisconsin legislature voting to evict a liberal “watchdog journalism” group from the UW Madison offices they’ve been occupying rent-free.

Doakes:

Journalists are the next favored minority?  So they must continue to receive free rent at the public university?  Or else it’s a huge Republican scandal?

The numbers are not working.  They claim to be operating on a $400,000 budget.  I don’t believe that for one second.  Not with 4 paid “professional staff” and 4 interns, paid.  Even with free rent, utilities, paper and donuts I don’t believe they would meet that budget.  I just don’t believe they are paying themselves low enough salaries to make that number work.   So that tells me there is hidden money funding them in addition to other support, like the free rent, utilities, donuts and paper.That’s the real issue.  The U at Madison, a bastion of liberal nonsense, is funneling taxpayer resources into a Liberal organization by the backdoor.  So lock the door.  Makes sense to me.

This is what responsible adults do when cutting the budget – they throw out the freeloaders.  This group has never heard of that notion because they live in Madison, a responsible-adult-free zone.

Joe Doakes

Joe links to a Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel piece in the Pioneer Press, which sets up the story:

An independent, nonpartisan investigative journalism organization facing expulsion from its offices at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is doing what one would expect from an investigative journalism organization.

“We are mounting an aggressive response,” said Andy Hall, executive director of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Hall was granting interviews Wednesday with media and watchdog journalists and bloggers across the country.

Whenever the media strenuously claims another media organization is “independent and non-partisan”, you may be assured they are not.

The “Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism” is sponsored by George Soros, as well as the liberal Joyce Foundation, which also funds the MinnPost  and lobbying/propaganda shell group “Protect Minnesota”.

And if knowing them by their sponsors doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, then know them by their work:

In 2011, the center broke the story about state Supreme Court Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley getting into a physical altercation.

The “story” they “broke” turned out to be a gross distortion that the “WCIJ” spun into a political stunt to benefit the Wisconsin Democrat party as they got ready to wage the battle over the legislative and gubernatorial recount.  The WCIJ is no less a bunch of partisan hacks than their fellow Soros project, the late, unlamented Minnesota Independent (and, it’d seem, its up-market replacement the MinnPost).

The freeloading “journalists” should not only be expelled from their publicly-funded digs, they should be perp-walked out while being pelted with rocks and garbage.

The time of year for senseless-but-fun studies trying to associate peoples’ traits, behaviors and peccadilloes to their politics.

Today?  What your choice of beer says about yoru politics:

Smithwick’s is never mentioned. What are they afraid of?

(And who am I kidding?  It’s always that time of year.  Although I’m sure it’s time for a “study” “proving” that liberals are smarter, any ol’ time here).

The MInnPost is an organization I’d very much like to respect. It includes a raft of people I’ve considered good reporters.

But over the course of Minnesota’s gun debate over this past session – brought on by Minnesota DFL legislators launching a raft of authoritarian gun bills, including at least one that called for confiscation of certain firearms – the MInnPost has shown a very crafty bias toward the anti-Second-Amendment crowd. From Erik Black’s series suggesting that the Second Amendment was just too complicated for modern people, to the fawning coverage the entire publication gives Heather Martens (“Executive Director” and one of very, very few actual members of “Protect Minnesota”), down to Doug Grow’s apparently pre-written slime job on Representative Hilstrom’s compromise “good gun bill” during the past session, the MinnPost has supported the orthodox anti-gun line to a fault.

Why is that?

It might be this:

I’m not sure, but a $50,000 grant from the rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation might have something to do with it.

No, correlation doesn’t equal causation. The fact that the MinnPost threw all sense of objectivity and journalistic detachment to the wind this past session on the gun issue and getting a nice-sized grant from a group that has bankrolled anti-gun groups around the country for over a decade could be purely a coincidence.  And it’s not like opposing the Second Amendment doesn’t come along with the left-of-center beliefs most of the staff hold. 

But when I read Doug Grow’s “coverage” of a post-session wrapup party for “Protect Minnesota“, the piece had the faint whiff of “PR” to it.

Given the outcome of the legislative session, the tone of Tuesday night’s meeting sponsored by Protect Minnesota was surprising.

Heather Martens, who leads the organization that long has been a force for advocating for stricter gun-control laws, urged the 23 people who attended the North Minneapolis meeting to think about the “successes” that came out of the session.

On first blush, that may seem like a hard thing to do, given that gun-rights organizations got all they wanted: No universal background checks, no limits on magazine capacities, no assault rifle bans.

It’s simple. There were no successes. Heather Martens – who has never, not once, uttered or written an original, non-numeric statement about firearm policy that wasn’t a lie – and her “group” were, er, shot down at every turn.

But “Protect Minnesota” doesn’t exist to convince people. It exists to manipulate the media – and, via them, the people.

Confederates! With Guns! Defending Slavery!  

Which may be what led to this next statement by Grow (with emphasis added):

And by the end of session, cowed legislators refused to even have a floor vote on anything resembling major gun-law change.

That’s just wrong.

The legislators weren’t so much “cowed” as organizing behind Deb Hilstrom’s Good Gun Bill (Ortmann’s in the Senate). Half of the House, comprising reps on both sides of the aisle, co-authored her compromise bill.  And when the backroom “negotiations” between the metro DFLers (who were carrying Heather Martens’ water to the point that one, Rep. Alice Hausman, let Heather Martens do her job for her) broke down, the bills were scuppered from the floor by a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and responsible outstate DFLers.

But that doesn’t fit the “big bad NRA!” narrative, does it?

History Is Written By Those With The Printing Presses

Grow carries on his stenography for Martens (emphasis added):

Martens told the group there was victory in the bipartisan support for $1 million to fund a law that requires the state to file data with the feds on those who should be prohibited from owning firearms.

The law requiring the state to file the data was passed in 2009 but was never funded, essentially making it useless.

Will Grow mention that it was a DFL legislature that scuppered that funding? The metrocrat Democrats didn’t want a bipartisan-backed background check to give the impression that it worked better than actual harassment of the law-abiding citizen.

“But Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln…”

Grow feels obliged to list the outcome of the tiny group’s self-therapy session:

The successes:

Phone-banking (more than 1,000 calls to legislators sitting on the fence).

Legislators reported that constituent calls ran at least 50:1 against the DFL’s bills.

Media coverage was complete.

Yeah, the suspense was killing us on that one.

That’s what Heather Martens does – get friendly media coverage. She’s the Larry Jacobs of the gun issue – the one, single, sole person that every Twin Cities “journalist” calls for the left’s take on guns in Minnesota.

We’ll come back to that.

“Wait – That Was Your “Intellectual” Argument?”

One of the other “Successes”, according to Grow:

Finding a “visceral” message, one that appeals to the emotions as well as the intellect.

I got a laugh there.

Emotion is the only message Heather Martens’ group has! Talk with any of her group’s “members”, I dare you. You’ll get a broadside of anger and grief over Sandy Hook (but never, ever Chicago, or any other crime scene where the kids don’t look like the children of NPR executives) – and not even the faintest whiff of an “intellectual” message.

Although, as always, I do invite Heather Martens on the NARN to make that “intellectual” case. I’ve been asking for nine years, now.

You Don’t Do Business Against The Family

As Martens via Grow noted above, one of their “successes” was “complete” media coverage.

Now, there’s no surprise there. Most of the media editors and producers in the Twin Cities support gun control. Other reporters, I suspect, haven’t the depth of knowledge on the issue to know that pretty much everything Heather Martens has ever said on the issue is a lie.

But Doug Grow’s piece – really, his entire history covering Martens for the MinnPost – has been at a level of obsequious fawning that outstrips the rest of the media.

Why?

Well, I’ve got a theory.  And remember – it’s just a theory.  I’ve got nothing but circumstantial evidence to back it up. 

But do you remember way up above, where we pointed out that the MInnPost gets big bucks from the anti-gun Joyce Foundation?

Guess who else is bankrolled – to the tune of “most all of its budget” – by Joyce?

This might not be “conflict of interest” for Grow, in any actionable sense of the term. But I’d think that identifying the fact that both Doug Grow’s and Rep. Martens’ jobs are paid for, in whole or part, by a non-profit supported by liberal plutocrats that is the single major funder of anti-gun organizations might have been worth a mention. 

Again, correlation doesn’t equal causation.

But given the complete abandonment of any sense of balance or concern for fact on the part of the MinnPost in covering the Second Amendment issue – not to mention Grow’s obsequious. fawning, toenail-painting coverage of Martens and her “group” this session –  “causation” doesn’t seem like a big stretch.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Warehouse tax snuck into law this session.  It’s been tried and repealed in other states, drives businessout of state.  Also, mining products tax makes Superior cheaper than Duluth.  Dumb.

You’d think a guy who hides his own money across the border – to take advantage of their tax laws – would understand that concept.

Joe Doakes

In all fairness, Governor Messinger Dayton might understand it.

But he’s got a DFL legislature full of people who are more used to having money laundered in-state by unions and other proxies than artfully sheltered elsewhere.

It makes their meetings difficult.

MPR’s Daily Current – whose Keri Miller is as reliable a PR flak as the DFL has – talked about the upcoming Governor’s race – with a panel of media libs:

After the Friday Roundtable taping wrapped up, Kerri threw one more question to our guests off the air: “Who is emerging as a GOP candidate to challenge Dayton?”

Patricia Lopez: “I don’t even know if that name is out there yet.”

Steve Perry: “The name I keep hearing in sort of an ‘if only’ vein from Republicans is Julie Rosen.”

Lopez: “She has not said ‘no’ and [I heard her give] what sure sounded like a stump speech. She just dropped by the office and I thought, ‘That sure sounded like a stump speech.’”

Brian Bakst: “She would be headed for a primary no matter what, though, because that stadium legislation that she co-sponsored would be a non-sale within the convention.”

Rosen’s generally good, with a few unfortunate traits, most notably her penchant for being among the first to work “across the aisle” – an inevitable last resort when you’re in the minority…

…which she was not, back in 2012, she led a small group of Republicans to ingratiate themselves with Helga Braid Nation without bothering to get any spending concessions from the Governor.

Of course, working with the DFL sans quid pro quo is one of the key criteria on getting the media to accept you…

…temporarily.

I direct you to Berg’s Eleventh Law (“The conservative liberals “respect” for their “conservative principles” will the the one that has the least chance of ever getting elected.”) and its various corollaries, especially the McCain Corollary (“If that respected conservative ever develops a chance of getting elected, that “respect” will turn to blind unreasoning hatred overnight”). You may be certain that if Keri Miller and Patricia Lopez are talking up Julie Rosen, that the Alliance for a Better Minnesota has a campaign in the pocket against her, all ready to go.

Perhaps “Julie Rosen: Stadiums for the 1%”.

Lopez – the editor of that notable bellwether for conservatives, the Strib – notes:

Lopez: “Think about how hard it would be for Dayton to run against a moderate, Republican woman. Yikes.”

I’m not saying Rosen might not be an excellent candidate. I’m willing to be persuaded. Seriously.

But the fact that a round table of de facto DFL apparatchiks – Steve Perry, for Stu’s sake – are mutedly humming her praises can’t be a good thing, right off the bat.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve discovered “IHeartRadio”‘s music stations feature; you enter an artist, set a lev of familiarity (so the system plays song by artists more or less closely stylistically related to your selected artist), and let the music roll.

And it’s cool. Seriously.

But every artist I entered – Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Marah, Richard Thompson, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Sam and Dave – all led, within half a dozen songs, to one Neil Young song or another.

Neil Young is the number 42 of pop music (in the Douglass Adams rather than Jackie Robinson senses of the word. Er, number).

Rumors from some reliable-enough sources indicate 400-term DFL 7th District Representive Collin Peterson may retire by the end of this term.

This would give the GOP an opportunity for a big flip in a part of the state that, like the Dakotas, has sent farm-pork-mongering DFLers to Washington for decades, but otherwise is solidly red.  The 7th – which is, politically, a suburb of North Dakota anyway – would very likely elect a Republican, if a good one shows up and has a functional party behind ’em.

So, 7th CD readers (and, let’s be honest, everyone else); who do you see running for the House in CD7 in 2014?

Mark Ritchie, two-term Secretary of State and George Soros beneficiary, will be leaving the Secretary of State’s office after two terms.

His main accomplishments:  bringing electoral reform to three grossly-underserved communities: the Fictional-Americans, Duplicate-Americans and Deceased-Americans.

They will no doubt miss him.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes about this piece (which started as a monologue on the NARN a few days before the blog post was published).

———-

Your end-of-show reading of Rep. Paymar’s column got me to thinking: we know background checks won’t work, but saying so doesn’t make it so. Can we better explain to Low Information Voters WHY they won’t work? Some thoughts for your future columns:

Background checks stop people from committing violence with guns, but only if (a) the shooter submits to the background check and (b) the database is accurate.

There are at least five kinds of gun violence. They occur for different reasons so they have different solutions.

Enterprise Violence is a business decision. When Al Capone found Bugs Moran taking over saloons to sell bootleg liquor in Capone’s territory, Capone didn’t have the option of bringing a lawsuit to restrain his competitor, as Microsoft might do today. He didn’t have the option of buying a city council members to grant him a city-wide franchise, as the cable company might do today. Capone was left with “alternative dispute resolution” to handle competitors: he shot them. Drug dealers today have the same business problem – illegal product, no recourse to courts – so when they have problems with competitors, they use the same business model that has proven so effective for the last 100 years: they shoot them.

Drug dealers by definition routinely import, manufacture, transport, buy and sell illegal items. If they’re successful, it’s because they have learned how to avoid law enforcement. Buying illegal guns presents no different logistical problems from buying illegal drugs.

The employee who pulls the trigger won’t be the guy who submits to the background check. Instead, the gang will use a person with a clean record – a new hire, or perhaps a wife or girlfriend – who can pass the background check to buy the weapon then hand the weapon to the eventual shooter. These “straw man” purchases will look completely legal on paper and even if law enforcement catches them, they’re just little fish, quickly replaced.

One solution to Enterprise Violence committed by dealers in illegal drugs may be the same as the solution to illegal liquor: repeal Prohibition. Background checks is not a solution.

Idiot Violence. Nizzel George was a 5-year old boy in North Minneapolis. He was sleeping on his grandmother’s couch when 17-year-old Stephon Shannon and 16-year-old Julian Anderson walked up the sidewalk and fired 10 shots from .40 caliber handguns at the house. One of the bullets punched through the siding and hit the sleeping child in the back. Shannon said he was a gang member and that he shot at the house in retaliation for the earlier shooting of a fellow gang member. He didn’t mean to kill Nizzel, didn’t even know he was in the house.

Hadiya Pendleton was a 15-year old girl from Chicago. She was an honor student and majorette who performed for President Obama’s inauguration. She was chatting with friends in Harsh Park on January 29, 2013 when she was struck by bullets fired by Michael Ward, age 18, also of Chicago. Ward and his getaway driver, Kenneth Williams, age 20 of Chicago, told police the shooting was in retaliation for earlier gang violence but Hadiya’s group was not the intended victims, her group was mistaken for other people.

President Obama mentioned Nizzel George and Hadiya Pendleton as reasons why new gun control laws are needed, including universal background checks but that makes no logical sense.

You must be 21 years old to buy a handgun. None of these shooters should have had one. Plainly, they didn’t submit to a background check. They most likely obtained their weapons the same way the Enterprise does – theft or straw purchase. They used guns to redress insults because that’s how things are done in their violent little sub-culture.

The solution to Idiot Violence may require massive social change to eliminate that violent sub-culture. Certainly, background checks alone won’t make any difference.

Mental Illness Violence. The Aurora Theater, Newtown School and Accent Signage shooters had histories of mental health problems but had not been formally committed. You cannot commit someone to a mental institution based on gossip or rumor or even the parent’s concerns because being committed for mental illness means the patient is locked up as securely as if he were being sent to prison. The law requires a judge to rule that the person is a danger to himself or others at that moment, based on admissible evidence from the patient’s history. Fear that the patient might someday snap is not admissible evidence. This sets a high standard of proof to deprive a person of his liberty and makes civil commitment difficult.

The background check database includes people who already have been committed for mental illness but these shooters hadn’t been committed so they wouldn’t be in the system. A background check would not have stopped them from buying weapons.

The solution to Mental Illness violence involves an overhaul of the mental health treatment system and re-evaluation of commitment law, none of which was included in Rep. Paymar’s proposal.

Suicide By Gun. There has been an increase in rates of suicide committed by middle-aged White men who are not drug dealers or gang members and had no prior history of mental illness. Nobody knows why although armchair psychologists speculate losing their life savings in the housing crash or job in the Recession make that generation of men feel like failures, or perhaps something unique to Baby Boomers (who already have higher rates of depression than earlier generations), or maybe a “tough-it-out” cultural reluctance to seeking mental health treatment. Since guns are the tool used, gun control advocates seek to control guns to reduce suicide rates.

The background check database does not include people who lost money or jobs. It does not include people who are depressed and decline treatment. Most middle-aged White men who commit suicide by firearm have owned their guns for years. The solution to Suicide By Gun might be similar to that for Mental Illness, but background checks won’t help.

Government Violence. Andrea Rebello, a 21-year old Hofstra University student, was being held hostage by a man who broke into her home when she was shot in the head by a cop, killing her instead of the man holding her. Ibragim Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando just as he was about to confess to helping the Boston Bomber commit murder.

Jeff Johnson, a laid-off employee, shot Steven Ercolino, the vice-president of the company, outside the Empire State Building. Police pursued Johnson and shot at him 16 times, killing Johnson and also wounding 9 innocent bystanders when bullets ricocheted off the stone building.

After Chris Dorner shot an off-duty cop in Los Angeles, police officers fired approximately 100 shots at a blue Toyota pickup truck in which Margie Carranza and her 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering newspapers. The officers mistook their truck for the gray Nissan Titan Dorner was believed to be driving. Hernandez was hit and Carranza suffered injuries from flying glass. On the same morning, Torrance police opened fire on the truck of a surfer headed for the beach.

Vang Khang’s family counted 22 bullet holes when police raided the wrong home in Minneapolis in 2008. Roberto Franco’s family lost their dog and nearly a daughter to a diabetic reaction when police raided the wrong house in St. Paul in 2012, shot the family pet, handcuffed the children and denied the diabetic girl her medicine. When Alden Anderson killed a police dog named Toby earlier this year, St. Paul police shot Anderson to death.

Rodney Balko at Cato Institute has an interactive map online showing botched paramilitary raids are an epidemic and innocent deaths are frequent. If it were occurring in any other country, we’d be aghast at the level of violence government directs at its own people.

The solution to Government Violence probably involves de-militarizing ordinary police, ending the War on Drugs and extending personal liability to careless police officers, but none of these shootings would have been prevented by background checks.

I’m sure you can think of more categories and examples but perhaps the mental exercise of breaking gun violence into small units will make it easier to explain why a universal blanket solution not only won’t solve the problem, it will divert attention from real solutions.

Bill Glahn notes with appropriate incredulity that Governor Messinger Dayton, who has presided over a government that has jacked up taxes, increased the state’s bureaucracy, and eliminated the sunset commission that was intended to prune the glut of superannuated state commissions that put help put the “big” in “Big Minnesota Government”, is now trying to wrap himself in libertarianism:

The Strib:

Republicans have tried to frame Dayton as a big-government, big-­taxing Democrat. But his government streamlining pitch could appeal to independents, who could become a make-or-break factor in his re-election chances. Dayton’s approval among independents has slipped in recent polls.

Glahn, with emphasis added:

I suppose the Star Tribune could be correct. If independents have not been paying attention at all to state government in the last three years, then yes, a reform message may hold some appeal. Unlike the Star Tribune, I suspect that Dayton’s falling approval rating among independents is evidence that they have been paying attention to state government, and are not liking what they are seeing under one-party rule.

As the head of the executive branch of state government, Dayton could start streamlining any day. If permitting is cumbersome, he can change that. He needn’t wait for another election, or even another session of the legislature.

I agree with Bill – but I think he’s being too pollyannaish.

I think the Strib suspects the same thing – that Messinger Dayton needs his polling among indies buffed up.

And, being as they are part of Messinger Dayton’s Praetorian Guard, they are putting the story out there precisely to do exactly that; to give the DFL a chanting point for the 2014 campaign; “Dayton – the real liberty candidate!”

Remember that one?:

Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago…The secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

Yeah, I remember that “transparent government” crap too.  That was back when The One was going to rehabilitate the US diplomatically in the eyes of the world, if I recall correctly.

Cuomo ratchets up gun control.

Bloomberg leads a group of mayors in a battle against the Second Amendment (when they can spare time from their own criminal defenses).

New York, mostly placid since the Giuliani years, erupts in gun violence:

Violence surged like the mercury Sunday, with three more fatalities from gun violence — and eight others wounded in shootings — bringing the total number of bullet-riddled in the city to 25 in less than 48 hours.

Only Staten Island was safe from the wide-ranging spray of gunfire and sickening weekend bloodshed. At least 12 people were blasted in Brooklyn, eight in the Bronx and another four in Queens. The sole person shot in Manhattan took several slugs to the chest and perished in broad daylight.

Of course, Chicago has the “toughest” gun laws in the country, and is a cesspool of violence.  Washington DC is right up there on both counts.  Connecticut had “tough” gun laws before Sandy Hook, and has ratcheted them up since – but in what state did Sandy Hook happen, again (all notwithstanding the fact that guns are absolutely illegal in schools to begin with)?

I know – correlation doesn’t equal causation.

But there’s just so much correlation.

To: Jim Graves, ex-candidate
From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re: Personal!

Mr. G,

I want to start a hotel chain.

It’s main goal is to knock off Marriott.

What’s its concept? Who cares! I don’t care if people are sleeping on rows of cots under oil light, as long as I kill off Marriott.

Seems dicey? Well, duh. When one says “I wanna knock off Marriott, one can fairly ask “with what?” It’s an important question.

It’d be a stupid business plan!

So when you withdrew from the CD6 race – daunted by the district’s Romney +15 showing (14 points better Han Rep. Bachmann) and what’ll no doubt be a national funding drought – you said you’d accomplished your mission – removing Bachmann. By implication, you seem to mean “whether by a Republican or a DFLer”.

Really?

So the day after the election, your mission would have been accomplished? The rest of your two years in DC would have been a tabula rasa?

(Well, duh, no. You’d have danced with the ones that brung you;youd have been little more than Betty McCollum with supernatural hair).

Did “my considered agenda ends on Day 2 in office” ever pop up in your campaign material?

That is all.

Tom Emmer is making the least mysterious mystery announcement of the political season later this morning in Delano.

Republican Tom Emmer is expected to make an announcement about his political future on Wednesday in his hometown of Delano, Minn.

Emmer is likely to announce he will run for the 6th District Congressional seat now held by Republican Michele Bachmann.

His expected announcement comes one week after Bachmann announced she will not seek re-election.

Remember – while Bachmanns squeaked by in 2012, Mitt won the district by 15 points. Alida Messinger is going to have to spend a lot to try to slander him as badly as in 2010.

The 6th is an embarrassment of riches in the GOP candidate department – but Emmer has got to be considered the 900 pound gorilla.

That said, some of the states conservative punditry has come out against an Emmer bid. I think it’s myopic to attack him too hard for losing in 2010; he was outspent 3:1 (money which supported a campaign that was utterly silent on substantive policy but was ling on corrosive personal attacks) and faced an “Independence” party candidate funded by lefties to siphon off GOP votes, at the head of a campaign that got off to a terribly shaky start, and atop a GOP slate that tanked across the board as an initial sign that the MNGOP was in big trouble.

And he lost by a whisker. Had any single one of those factors been different – the money, they campaign rollout, the effect of the slander campaign, the collapse of the MNGOP – he’d have won.

Absent tens of millions of dollars of DFL plutocrat support? At the head of what may be the states most functional GOP organization? In a R+Lots district? This isn’t 2010.

There are other candidates, to be sure. Former House Majority leader Matt Dean is a solid contender. And I think Anoka County commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah, with her campaign win in one of the bluer parts left in CD6, would be an attractive candidate as well…

…among many others.

I don’t live there, of course; I’m stuck battling against Betty McCollum.

Bit lets start the straw poll. Who do you want to see run in CD6?

Of course,

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If the dice at your casino come up seven every single time – about which you are shocked to learn and know nothing – I’m eventually going to wonder why these dice defy the odds and I will begin to question your credibility.

If the scandals in your administration – about which you are shocked to learn and know nothing – run against conservatives every single time, I’m eventually going to wonder why this long string of incidents defies the odds and I will begin to question your credibility.

Joe the Plumber
New Black Panthers
Fast and Furious
IRS audits
IRS Tea Party
IRS Israel supporters
Sebelius’ HHS shakedown

I’m beginning to wonder if President Obama is playing completely fair.

Joe Doakes
Como Park

It’s the Chicago way.

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!

• I’ll be in from 1-3PM.   We’ll be talking with the Minnesota Warriors about their game on Monday.  Also the close of the legislative session.
• Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!

(All times Central)

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