SCENE: at the Twin Cities Liberal Blogger Collective, located in a secret chamber below the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.

Liberal bloggers Cat SCAT, Derek ROSTON, Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN, GUTTERBALL Gary, and Senior Blogger Randy POSTAL are plotting out their next days coverage, along with cartoonist Kevin LIVERWURST.

POSTAL:  All right.  Let’s start working on today’s coverage.  What’s first?

TORSTENGAARDSEN:   Republicans are complaining about the Dayton tax plan.  My headline is “Republicans complain about Dayton tax plan”.

ROSTON: I’d go with “Republicans:  Tax Plan Is So Unfair!”

POSTAL:  Hm.  Doesn’t exactly zing.  New headline…I got it!  “Republicans Pee Pants Over Tax Fairness!”

(Rest of bloggers chortles with glee as TORSTENGAARDSEN types).

SCAT: How about Glen Gruenhagen’s remarks about gays?

(The rest of the bloggers “hiss”).

SCENE:  Adriana and Michael GONZALES, age 30 and 32, owners of a small family commercial cleaning business and parents of three children, are walking through the woods near Minnehaha Park.  It’s foggy and foreboding.

ADRIANA: Mike, did you see something in the woods?

MICHAEL:  Yeah.  Looks like – guys in helmets?

ADRIANA:  This is weird.

MICHAEL:  No kidding…

(They stop, noticing three people in medieval knight costumes – Tom BAKK, Ryan WINKLER and Heather MARTENS – astride the path).

MICHAEL:  Er, who are you?

BAKK:  We are the Knights Who Say “Living Wage!”

WINKER:  We are three elected representatives…

(BAKK nudges WINKLER, points toward Martens, who is gazing distractedly at a squirrel. WINKLER shrugs)

WINKLER: …who roam the forest spreading social justice!

(MICHAEL and ADRIANA shrug)

WINKLER:  If you wish to pass through this forest, you must appease us!

ADRIANA:  Er…OK?  With what?

WINKLER:  You must hire…a Minimum Wage Employee!

MICHAEL:  Cool.  I was hoping to do that.  We’ve got more business than the two of us can handle.

BAKK: Silence?

MICHAEL: Huh?

WINKLER:  You must pay them…nine dollars per hour!

ADRIANA:  Oh, no.  We just need people to do basic cleaning.  We can pay a bonus, but it’s not worth $9 an hour…

BAKK:  And you may not cut your other employees’ hours or benefits to pay the training wage rate, which is itself higher than the federal minimum wage!

WINKLER:  Or lay them off!

BAKK and MARTENS: Or lay them off!

ADRIANA:  Well, then we just can’t hire anyone!

BAKK:  Be happy to pay for a Better Minnesota!

ADRIANA (to MARTENS): So what are you doing here?

MARTENS:  Guns on a bed of escarole make a wonderful snack.  So much better than killing people!

(Sounds in distance:  Minstrels playing over the clip clop of horses, as Governor DAYTON, riding a white charger, appears at the head of a retinue of knights and minstrels.

MINSTREL (as lutes and flutes play in the background) Brave Sir Mark ran away / bravely ran away away! / When terror made its presence known, he bravely turned and scampered home…

DAYTON: Blargle not blargle sure blargle not blargle blargle!

MICHAEL to ADRIANA (whispers): This is a weird place…

MINSTREL: He wasn’t afraid to face Roger Goodell / or tell Alida she’s not so swell / brave brave brave brave sir Mark…

DAYTON:  Blargle!  Blargle not blarg!

MICHAEL : So what if I can’t afford it?

WINKLER:  It’s against the law!  Don’t ask questions!

ADRIANA:  We could just take our business to North Dakota!

BAKK:  Hah!  And for what?  Money?

DAYTON: Blargle!

MICHAEL:  Well…yeah!

WINKLER:  But you can’t get MPR in North Dakota!

ADRIANA:  Yes, I can – we paid for that, too.

BAKK:  But in Minnesota, you will soon have unionized daycare!

ADRIANA:  I like the daycare we have just fine.

WINKLER:  But you can pay more for them!

MARTENS:  It’s a known fact that daycare that costs more is better for children.  Especially if you ban guns.

MICHAEL:  What the…?

DAYTON: Blargle blargle!

ADRIANA (pulling a Texas brochure from her purse and looking at MICHAEL):  This is a silly place.

The couple walk past the jabbering knights.

And SCENE.

I met my old friend Avery LIBRELLE at an “Au Bon Pain” in New Prague the other day.

LIBRELLE:  So  you keep writing that you think liberals in Minnesota never really learn how to debate conservatives.

ME:  Yep.  It’s true.  A liberal in Minnesota can come up through primary and secondary education systems that more or less subtly reinforce liberal dogma, go to a university where conservatives need not apply and where conservatism is treated as a cartoon by professors who themselves never learned to respect critical thinking much less practice it, and then go into a career in academia, journalism, government, the non-profits, unions, education – fields where conservatism is pretty much frowned on. To be fair, conservatives in Utah or Wyoming or North Dakota may have the same problem – although schools, universities and non-profits in those states largely aren’t magically conservative.

LIBRELLE:  Well, I’m here to prove you wrong.  I’ve been boning up on debate tactics by reading all of the prominent Minnesota leftybloggers.

ME: Ah. Excellent.  OK.  So let’s debate.  Pick a subject!

LIBRELLE:  The DFL’s gun safety initiatives.

ME:  Hm.  OK.  I can dig into that one.  The DFL’s gun grabs will at best make no dent in crime, and at worst make it worse.

LIBRELLE:  That’s just cray cray.

ME: Um – huh?

LIBRELLE:  That means “Crazy”.

ME:  I know what it means.  Would you care to go into details?

LIBRELLE:  It’s cray cray.  As in very cray.

ME: Er…OK.  Any actual factual assertions you’d like to make?

LIBRELLE:  I think “it’s cray cray” is plenty.

ME: Hm.  OK.  Let’s move on to the sales and business service taxes.  They’re going to gravely handicap Minnesota business.

LIBRELLE:   Yeah (makes scare quotes in air) “right“.

ME:  Um – say what?

LIBRELLE: Yeah (makes scare quotes in air) “right“.

ME:  Er…

LIBRELLE:  That means “I suppose that makes sense, if you’re a wingnut”.

ME:  OK.  How about the DFL gutting the mining industry up in the Iron Range, or for that matter trying to strangle the frac sand mining business in the southwest?  The metro area environmental liberal lobby seems to have pretty much seized control of the DFL.

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate the children?

ME:  That’s not an answer!  That’s an insult and a deflection!

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  The wingnut is having a meltdown!

ME:  (Deep breath).  OK.  How about election fraud.

LIBRELLE:  There’s not a single reported case anywhere.

ME: Yes there is.

LIBRELLE:  There’s not a single reported case anywhere.

I had a chat with Avery LIBRELLE, a liberal friend of mine at a local coffee shop in Saint Paul; Avery had just gotten off from a shift of answering phones for MPR’s pledge drive.

LIBRELLE:  I’m glad the DFL are talking about raising the minimum wage.  It’s time the working poor caught a break.

ME: Well, that’s kind of untrue.  Most of “the working poor” work for more than whatever the minimum is.  The vast majority of people earning the minimum wage are young, entry-level workers.  Very few people over the age of 16 actually make the minimum wage – and those over 25 that do usually do it because of choices, good or bad or indifferent, that either they or their parents made.

LIBRELLE:  Well, it’ll be good for them, too.  More money is good, right?  It stimulates consumer spending when workers have more money!

ME:   Well, yeah, but where does that “more money” come from?

LIBRELLE:  Employers!

ME:  And…?

LIBRELLE:  They’ll pay more!

ME:  Er…why?

LIBRELLE:  Because the law will say so!

ME:  Um…no, they won’t.

LIBRELLE:  Sure they will.  $9.50 is more than $7.25!

ME:   Well, yeah – any minimum-wage worker will get more money per hour.  But it doesn’t mean their employers will spend more, especially in a tough economy.

LIBRELLE:   Well, that’s Bush’s fault.

ME:   Be that as it may, look at it this way.  Let’s say a store owner has $100 an hour to spend on payroll at her small business.  That’s her labor budget; it’s what she can afford to spend, given the revenues she brings in, on labor, on top of materials, rent, utilities and a modest wage for herself – and just to keep from going crazy, I won’t add in all the service taxes she’ll be paying under Governor Messinger’s Dayton’s tax proposal.  Currently, that allows her to employ about 14 people at minimum wage.   If the minimum wage goes up to $9.50, that means she can employ ten people.

And that’s not even counting the changes to the payroll tax, which bring it down to more like nine.  And that’s leaving out healthcare.  So – nine employees get a raise, and five get laid off.  Meaning the nine who are left are going to have to work a whole lot harder.

LIBRELLE:   The employer can just budget more for labor!

ME:  Yeah, there’s not actually room in her budget to increase her labor costs by close to 50%.  Not unless her business’ revenues zoom upward which, by the way, isn’t happening these days.

LIBRELLE:  She can take it out of her salary!

ME:  Did you catch the part about her having a “very modest” salary after all her expenses?  If she tacks $40 an hour onto her labor costs, she’ll be working for free – which is less than the minimum wage.  She may as well close the business, then – which means instead of laying off five, she’ll be putting all 14 out of work.

LIBRELLE:  Maybe the workers should unionize!

ME:  And that’ll increase revenues how?

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate children?

(And SCENE)

I was down at the Capitol last night watching Representative Martens testify.  My friend AVERY LIBRELLE was there, wearing a “Freedom not to get Shot” button.

LIBRELLE:  Gun violence is out of control!  We need fewer guns on the street!

ME: Well, no.  It’s down by nearly half in the past twenty years, as the number of civilian guns has grown by nearly half.   In fact, the gun crime rate is dropping pretty much every where but in places like Chicago, which continue to defy the Supreme Court and the Constitution and ban civilian gun ownership by the law-abiding citizen.

LIBRELLE!  Hah!  We won’t stop crime in Chicago until we have a comprehensive national policy on guns!

ME: So you’re saying Chicago’s murder rate is the fault of Indiana, Wisconsin and downstate Illinois?

LIBRELLE: Yes! Those guns in Chicago come from outside the city where guns are legal!

ME:  So if “availability of guns” is the problem, then why isn’t crime in all those other areas also booming?

LIBRELLE:  You support slavery, don’t you?

(And SCENE).

Emboldened by Betty McCollum’s plaintive cry for a “dialog”, I met my DFLer friend, AVERY LIBRELLE.  Avery was just coming out of point-chanting practice at the Union building in downtown Saint Paul; we decided to have a dialog over a drink or two at the St. Paul Hotel.

MITCH:  OK, a dialog about guns.  OK, I’ll start by pre-empting one inevitable strawman; there are gun controls that actually reduce crime.  They include keeping guns out of the hands of felons, and ramping up the sentences for gun crimes.  They’re the measures the “Gun Lobby”, including but not limited to the NRA, have worked for.  And they’ve worked.

LIBRELLE:  The NRA is a terrorist group.

MITCH:  Um…well, no.  It’s an industry and hobby group that does some lobbying.

LIBRELLE:  They are owned by the gun industry.

MITCH:  The firearms industry certainly donates money to the NRA, since they are the biggest, baddest group fighting for their right to do business.  They have the right to do that.  But the NRA has always been one of America’s biggest grass-roots organizations.  And it’s only getting bigger; it’s up 500,000 in the past six weeks.  And that’s people who pay $35, at least, for a year; not a ton of money, but not inconsiderable in these tough times, either.  And that’s up from 3 million in 1990.

LIBRELLE:  Guns are out of control!
MITCH:  Er, no.  Violent crime is steadily falling, even as the number of guns in society approaches one for every American.  Gun crimes are down nearly 50% in the past 20 years, along with crime in general.  And the NRA worked with sensible politicians on both sides of the aisle to make that happen.    In other words, the NRA has always supported gun controls that actually work – by attacking criminals, not the law-abiding.
LIBRELLE:  But mass shootings are out of control!

MITCH:  Well, no – media coverage notwithstanding, they’re actually less common than they were 20 years ago.  In fact, the worst year for mass shootings was…1929.

LIBRELLE:  But we have to dooooooo something.

MITCH:  We’ve done something.  It’s been working.  It’s just that we haven’t done the “something” that our media establishment and its’ left-of-center political benefactors want.
 LIBRELLE:  We have to control guns.  Period.

MITCH:  Did you just use “Period” to try to prove a point?

LIBRELLE:  Guns are out of control.

MITCH:  Er, where do you get this?

LIBRELLE:  You’re crazy.

MITCH:  Um – what now?  We’re having a dialog, right?  And yet all you’ve done is recite chanting points and long-debunked stats.

LIBRELLE:  I bet you’re compensating for something.  If you know what I mean.

MITCH:  Yep.  Compensating for the fact that there is evil in this world, yadda yadda.

LIBRELLE: You’re just a cranky middle-aged bald white guy.

MITCH:  And the last I checked the Constitution applies to us too.  So – do you have any actual facts to bring to this “dialog?”

LIBRELLE:  The NRA are fascists.

MITCH:  So in response to decades of patiently-assembled facts that support my case, you have ad-homina and chanting points?

LIBRELLE:  You’re cray-cray.

MITCH:  That’s not, technically, “dialog”.

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate children.

MITCH:  This isn’t dialog.  This is me debating, you trying to trash me.

LIBRELLE:  Now you’re having a melt-down.

MITCH:  Don’t flatter yourself.

LIBRELLE:  I should wear a flak jacket.  You may try to kill me.

MITCH:  That’s nuts.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, now you’re attacking me personally!  There’s no way to have a dialog with you gun nuts!

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  MITCH is talking with AVERY LIBRELLE while standing in the bulk organic aisle at Mississippi Market.

LIBRELLE:  I’ve been reading your blog.  I’ve noticed that you constantly refer to gun owners as “Real Americans”.

MITCH:  Yep.

LIBRELLE:  Why?  You’re saying you have to support the National Rifle Association to be a “Real American?”

MITCH: Of course. not.  But let me ask you this.  If I said “I support the Bill of Rights, but I think  the Fourth Amendment should not apply to Mexicans or Mexican-Americans?

WELCOME, Instapundit readers!

———-

My neighbor AVERY LIBRELLE is concerned about gun violence.

We met at a local coffee shop, where we spoke over the sound of a group of locals that was keeping alive the tradition of out-of-tune folk music played by large, enthusiastic groups of the tone-deaf.

LIBRELLE:  We need to ban high-clip bullets and assault weapons!

ME:  Ugh.

LIBRELLE: “Ugh?”  What?

ME:  Oh, I’ve only been having this argument for 25 years.  For starters, they’re called “high-capacity magazines”.  A “clip” as a general term for “anything that holds bullets” is a bit of Hollywood slang.  Really explaining it requires me to get all pedantic about how guns work, and I know you don’t care, and explaining it really takes me off the topic, but here – let me show you this:

“Clips”, pretty much by definition, are not “high-capacity”.  To talk much more about it would be to go onto a tangent that only gun geeks really care much about.

LIBRELLE:  Well, the media uses them interchangeably.

ME:  Uh, yeah.

LIBRELLE:  Anyway – you can not show me a reason anyone needs a…what?  High-capacity “magazine”?

ME:  No, I can’t show you one.

LIBRELLE:  I knew it.

ME:  I can show you several. (more…)

I had a conversation with AVERY LIBRELLE.  Avery is an associate professor of Victimization Studies at Saint Thomas, and still votes for Paul Wellstone every election.

LIBRELLE: So are you gun nuts really demanding that we arm all teachers?

ME: Well, no.  Some conservatives merely want to allow teachers that qualify for carry permits – pass the background checks, take the training and so on – that wish to, to bring their legally-purchased firearms to school.  Concealed, anonymous, no publicity.

LIBRELLE: That’s just madness.  That just adds more guns to the situation.

ME: Well, yeah.  Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.  Which, the past 25 years of experience have shown, is at worst neutral and very likely a good thing, and which current police doctrine shows is the best way to deal with mass shooting situations.

LIBRELLE: What?  That’s insane!  Teachers are trained to teach!  It’ll take years to train them to be soldiers!

ME: Soldiers?  Huh?  You don’t have to be a “soldier” to defend yourself.  When a regular citizen is faced with a life-or-death situation, it’s usually pretty cut and dried; there is someone right in front of you providing an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm to you or the people around you.  You pull a gun, you point, you shoot.

LIBRELLE:  That’s so not how it works.

ME: Well, yeah.  It is.  The record is full of 14 year old kids and septuagenarians and elderly women and pregnant women, teenage single moms and just plain folks successfully defending themselves against violent – indeed, by definition, lethal – crime.

LIBRELLE:  Well, mass shooters are different.  They are white, young, male, and very, very smart.  They plan their shootings out to a “T”.  There is no way the regular citizen can stand up to them!  Only the police can deal with freaks like this.

ME:  Again, Avery, no.  For starters, cops have their own problems; the policeman at Columbine wasn’t able to stop Klebold and Harris, although someone should tell David Gregory that the cop likely saved quite a few lives – and the SWAT team didn’t go into the building at all until hours after everyone including Klebold and Harris were dead.  After that, cops changed their tactics, and we’ll come back to that.

In the meantime, we have several instances of armed citizens stopping mass-shooters in mid-shooting, including the guy in Portland Oregon two weeks ago, and Jeanne Assam in Colorado Springs a few years back.

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  Now I know you’re parroting NRA talking points!  Both of those shooters killed themselves!   The armed civilian Rambo-wannabees didn’t kill them!

ME:  Now, hang on, Avery.  No need to be so bloodthirsty.  The goal isn’t necessarily to get a notch on one’s handgrip.  It’s to end the shooting.

And that brings us to police tactics.  Guess what they train police to do about mass shooters these days?  Not wait for the SWAT team. but go in and get after the shooter as fast as they can – because since mass shooters do tend to be intelligent, but narcissistic and disturbed and and to live in fantasy worlds, once you disrupt the fantasy and derail the plan, they do tend to stop, re-assess, panic and kill themselves.  The goal is to cause that derailing when the massacre has just started, rather than when they’re standing up to their waists in dead bodies and hearing the sirens coming, like Harris and Klebold and Seung-Hui Cho and Jeffrey Weise.  And depending on the killer, that disruption can be pretty minor; in Portland last December 11, Nick Meli didn’t have to fire so much as a shot to get the Clackamas Mall shooter to slink away into a store and polish himself off.   These people are narcissists and cowards; once their master plan gets off the rails, they almost always either kill themselves or, like the Aurora shooter, give up.

LIBRELLE:  But the Brady Organization says arming teachers would only make things worse.

ME:  Oh, you mean that if a teacher had shot back at Lanza, things might have gotten bad?

LIBRELLE:  Well, yeah…that’s what Brady says!  Anyway – Teachers are not soldiers.  They spend their careers mastering pedagogy and nurturing, not soldiers!

ME:  Wait – do you think the guy in Portland trained his whole life to get ready for that moment in that mall?  Don’t be absurd! You’ll labor in vain to find a single civilian who shoots, successfully, in self-defense, that spent an entire working career preparing for the moment.  But go ahead and try!

But let’s just say for argument’s sake that you’re right; that by the nature of a teacher’s job, they should never, ever be armed, even if their states of residence have duly issued them carry permits for which they’re qualified.  That’s what we’re saying, right?

LIBRELLE:  Yes.

ME:  Even if they have a carry permit, which according to nationwide statistics means they’re a couple of orders of magnitude more trustworthy with firearms than the general public?

LIBRELLE:  Of course.  No armed teachers.  It’s just not right!

ME:  Because being gentle-bred, lotus-eating teachers, the whole subject of killing in self-defense is beyond them?

LIBRELLE:  No need to be so snide – but yes.  Basically.

ME: So the schools then opt to follow current law-enforcement procedure, and follow President LaPierre’s idea of hiring guards to try to carry that out in our schools?  To try to disrupt the shooters’ plans, just like law enforcement advises.  Just as Israel has done for some time now against a real, constant threat.

LIBRELLE: Oh, no.  The NEA has said that that’s insane!

ME:  So let me get this straight:  a union comprised of people that you just said were incompetent to see to their own and their childrens’ defense (notwithstanding potentially having carry permits that show they are competent) is nonetheless expert enough in self-defense tactics to reject current law-enforcement practice out of hand?

LIBRELLE:  …

ME:  Well?

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate the children?  And women?

(And SCENE)

The other day, I was talking with Sheila Rae Thorvaldssen, a woman from Dilworth Minnesota who writes the liberal-leaning blog Oh Noes, Wingnutz Are Blooming Like Loosestrife On My Lawn.  It is one of the leading blogs, left or right, from outstate Minnesota.

The conversation went something like this:

THORVALDSSEN:  Har har, Merg!  You gunny wingnuts have been pwn3ed again!  Tony Cornish said stuff that wasn’t true!

ME: Yeah, that’s the problem with being a pro-Second Amendment activist.  If you’re a gun controller, all you have to do is keep repeating the same lines over and over again.  On our side, you have to keep up with current events.  Israel “toughened” up their gun laws in the last decade or so!

THORVALDSSEN:  It must be awkward to realize you were wrong on all the facts!

ME: Well, it sucks bobbling facts, and we all try not to.  But here’s the rub;  you’ve heard that old saying, “the British lose all the battles but win the wars?”

THORVALDSSEN:  No.  Did Conan O’Brien say it?

ME: Nope.  Anyway – it’s a little like that when you’re a 2nd Amendment activist.  Every once in a while you may bobble a fact, or factoid, that’s part of the larger discussion – but we’re still right on the actual conclusions.

THORVALDSSEN:  Oh, riiiiiight.

ME: Well, wrapped around that factoid about the Israelis “toughening” their gun laws are two facts that everyone, like you, that jumps up and down about Rep. Cornish – and me! – bobbling the fact is the inconvenient truth that that factoid reinforces two conclusions that we’ve always made.

THORVALDSSEN:  That’s just crazy talk.

ME: Well, yeah, but not in the way you think.  For starters, the “tightening” of gun laws – on the law-abiding – in Israel cut the number of legal firearms in half – but more than doubled the number of illegal ones, and reinforced the black market.  Which is exactly what happens whenever gun control is tried, whether in Tel Aviv or Chicago.

THORVALDSSEN:  Hah hah!  You said there were two conclusions, but you only gave one!  You are a liar!

ME: Well, the other one is this;  whatever happened in Israel in the past decade or so, and whatever they do now, it is a historical fact that in the seventies, there were several attacks on Israeli schools and school children –  the 1970 Avivim Massacre which killed 12 kids, the Kiryat Shmona massacre (which began as an attempt to kill the children at a kibbutz school and evolved from there, ending in 18 dead, eight of them children), and the Ma’alot Massacre (terrorists killed 22 children and five adults).  That’s 42 dead children among three incidents, in a population about the size of Minnesota’s.  Can you imagine almost five Red Lake massacres in four years, the affect that’d have here?  Anyway – at the time, one of Israel’s responses – one of many – was to allow teachers in high risk areas along the borders to carry legally-permitted guns.

THORVALDSSEN:  So?

ME: So the attacks on children stopped.  They found softer targets – actually, they largely switched to bombs and rockets.

THORVALDSSEN:  But Cornish got current Israeli law wrong.  So your entire point is invalid!  Hah!  Bow down before my superior reasoning, bitchez!

ME:  Not if your point is “there are some ideas out there to stop school violence”.  The point being, once schools became harder targets – in this case, harder because teachers in vulnerable areas were armed – school shooting stopped.

People like Cornish – and me, by the way – say that that just might be a better than the “gun-free school zones” that we’ve been trying for the past 25 years or so.

THORVALDSSEN:  But you forgot the ultimate argument against arming teachers.

ME: What’s that.

THORVALDSSEN: It won’t work.  Period.

ME: What makes that the ultimate argument?

THORVALDSSEN:  I said “Period” at the end.

ME: Hm.

THORVALDSSEN:  That means you’ve been pwn3d.

ME: Huh.

THORVALDSSEN:  Do you feel awkward yet?

ME: Sure, why not?

And SCENE.

SCENE:  MITCH is walking down Constitution Avenue, near the state capitol.  It’s a bright, bright, sunshiny day.  Detached-looking figures wander, aimlessly and slightly out of focus, in the distance.

(Aaron ROSTON, DFL activist, pro-bullying-activist and blogger from Fungus Flats, MN, is standing in the middle of the sidewalk).

MITCH (stepping around ROSTON):  Excuse me.

ROSTON (with supercharged sarcasm):  Oh, yeah, right.  You’re so excused.

MITCH:  Huh?

ROSTON:  Oh, right.  I just  bet you don’t understand me.

MITCH:  O…K…

(Walks onward)

Professor William G. KRIEPPI staggers into the frame as MITCH walks down the street.

MITCH: Hey, Professor.

(KRIEPPI abruptly lurches off the street, walks into a light pole, and falls, insensible, onto the grass, unconscious).

MITCH:  Damn.  Hey… (turns to passing figure, who turns out to be Dark MAYTON, billionaire playboy political consultant), er, can you help this guy?

MAYTON:  The moon is made of olives and I am pulsating.

MITCH (watches as MAYTON walks down the sidewalk.  KRIEPPI snores loudly on the grass).  What a very strange place.

ROSTON:  Oh, yeah. So strange…

MITCH:  Good lord, you’re a wierd little person.

(MITCH walks toward the Capitol,  He is presently accosted by a shadowy figure – that of PLARF BINGNERT, chief project manager in the Rhetorical Engineering department at  the Alliance for a Better Minnesota).

BINGNERT:  Mister Berg, why do you do these curious dialogues?  It’s almost as if you are trying to say something.

MITCH:  Well, usually, yes – but I feel as if this one has gotten out of control.  It’s like…

BINGNERT: WOOOOT WOOOOOOOOT WOOOOOOOT WOOOOOOOOP WOOOP WOOOOP WOOOOOP!

MITCH (sotto voce): What the hell?

ROSTON (in distance, walking in tight circle):  Oh, yeah – Mr. Family Values, using swears.  That’s so “family”. 

(BINGNERT wanders aimlessly away).  Po di po di po di po!

(MITCH wanders to the base of the capitol steps, sits on the base of the plinth of one of the statues of the Heroes of Minnesota Social Democracy).  

(Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, narrative-buffer for “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, dressed in Lederhosen and Doc Martens boots, rappels down from a bright orange helicopter). 

CARROLL (yelling shrilly through a megaphone):  HEY!  The GOP wants to sell your children!

MITCH:  No, they don’t. 

CARROLL (still yelling):  The GOP wants to run Minnesota from Mississippi!

MITCH: That’s just bizarre.

CARROLL (still yelling): They want to feed your children assault rifles!

MITCH: That just makes no sense.

ROSTON (yelling from middle of lawn):  Oh, yeah – Democrats never make sense, do they, Merg?

MITCH (sotto voce):  If I say “that’s a fascinating point”, will you go away?

(CARROLL wanders into the distance, shouting random accusations into the bullhorn.  As she and her din recede into the distance, a man dressed in a large purple rabbit costume hops laboriously up the sidewalk and stops in front of MITCH). 

RABBIT:  Hi.  I’m Wyatt RINKLER.  You only do these fantasy dialogues because you are afraid.  And having a melt-down.  

MITCH:  Well, no.  

RINKLER:  I’m too stupid to understand what you just said. 

ROSTON (suddenly up close):  Oh, we’re all too stupid, says Merg.  

MITCH:  (shakes head, as if to shake off a sucker punch)  Beg pardon?

RINKLER:  Yarby yarby yarby.

(RINKLER hops away into the distance, disappears over the horizon).  (Yes, a hoppable horizon is unaccountably visible from the Capitol.  Go figure). 

MITCH (walks up steps to Capitol doors.  ROSTON follows at a distance, making sarcastic-sounding noises that never quite resolve into words).  

MITCH (looking out over city):  Wow.  It must have been the burrito.

(From the Capitol comes an ephemeral shape, that of Cat SCAT, factoid bookkeeper for Take Action MN).

MITCH:  Hey.  Nice day, huh?

SCAT:  I’ll check to see what Daily Kos says.

ROSTON (muted in the distance): Oh, yeah – so nice!

MITCH (past caring):  So does Kos confirm?

SCAT:  Can you confirm that this dialog actually happened?

MITCH:  I can confirm that it did not actually happen.  It’s entirely a figment of my imagination.

SCAT:  So it’s a lie!

MITCH:  No.  It’s fiction.  Fiction illustrates, via storytelling, symbolism, metaphor, satire, humor and other devices, things that non-fiction writing can’t.  

(Senator Tom BAKK and speaker of the House Paul THISSEN walk out Capitol doors)

SCAT:  So you admit it’s false?

ROSTON (on sidewalk, dousing self in strawberry milkshakes): Oh, Merg is never false!

(BAKK and THISSEN pick MITCH’s pocket, replace wallet with a “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota” leaflet)

MITCH (ignoring ROSTON):  Irrelevant.  It’s neither “True” nor “False”.  It’s fictional, so it’s made up – but it can show what I reasonably believe to be larger truths.  Or not.  Sometimes satire is parody, sometimes caricature.  Sometimes it’s just plain absurdist, with the perceived truths buried beneath a heaping pile of misdirection. Sometimes it’s just mockery.  

SCAT:  That’s just wrong.

MITCH:  Wrong?  You mean, like a liberal TV star pretending to be an over the top caricature of a conservative TV star to satirize conservatives and our alt-media? 

SCAT (looks at at “Crooks and Liars” on IPad, is silent)

MITCH:  Er…Steven Colbert?

SCAT (Dissolves into the ether)

ROSTON (yells at passing teenage girl): Hey!  My sister had capris like that – until my dad got a job!  Who does your hair – Stevie Wonder?

MITCH:  Wow.  Imagine if they’d lost the election.  

(Walks to parking lot.  Gives leaflet to attendant.  Drives off into sunset).

I was out at Target the other day when I ran into a familiar face pushing a shopping cart full of Reynolds Wrap through the grocery section.  It was Professor William G. Krieppi, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Hennepin Technical College’s School of Geology.

It went something like this.

———-

KRIEPPI:  (Seeing me) Hey, Merg!  Brian Lambert at the Minnpost sure pwn3ed you?

ME:  Hm.  I always wondered how one pronounced “Pwn3d”.  Otherwise – and I know I’ll regret asking you this – what are you talking about?

KRIEPPI: He called you out on your “citizen journalist” nonsense!  In the MinnPost!

ME:  Well, I’m glad to see they have such important stuff to cover.

KRIEPPI:  Check it out!

ME:  Jeez, it’s only Lambert.   I’ve got stuff I gotta do.

KRIEPPI:  You are clearly melting down.   Why do you hate children?

ME:  Oh, what the hell.   (Types quickly on IPhone) (sotto voce) If I say “That’s a fascinating point”, will you go away?  (Normal tone of voice) OK, here it is:

…you might want to reader conservative blogger Gary Gross’s take on [whatever Lambo was writing about]. It concludes with this semi-classic threat: “What this means is that Gov. Dayton’s words, Pat Kessler’s words and other biased media’s words didn’t have a hint of truth to them. It’s worth noting that ABM didn’t hesitate in using them in their statewide smear campaign against GOP candidates. It’s time for Mr. Sommerhauser and other reporters to blister Alida Messinger, Gov. Dayton and the Twin Cities media for telling the whoppers that they told. If he won’t, citizen journalists like Mitch Berg and myself will expose the DFL for the corrupt political party it is.” Hey, guys, can I see your “citizen journalist” badges?

KRIEPPI:  hahahahaahahahaaahaahahahahaahahaahahahaaahaaha (shallow breath) )hahahaahahaahahahaaahaahahahahaahahaahahahaaahaahahahahaaha!!!

ME:  OK…?

KRIEPPI:  So where’s your badge, Merg?

ME:  I don’t have one.  But then, I used to work as a reporter, and I didn’t have a “badge” back then, either.  Why don’t you ask Lambert to see his “badge”?

KRIEPPI:  He is teh real journalist!  What teh hcek is a “citizen journalist”?

ME:  (Groaning wearily) I don’t much care for the term “citizen journalist”, and I never have..  And for that matter, the term “Journalist”, either.  Establishment “journalists” wrap themselves in the term to try to give themselves a veneer of non-existant “objectivity”.  The problem is, left-leaning establishment journos from the NYTimes down to the MinnPost, along with the Administraiton, are trying to define the term such that only “people who get paid by institutional media outlets” qualify as “journalists”, which is cynical and stupid, but certainly self-serving.

KRIEPPI:  Quit equivocating!  He pwn3d you!  Maybe even pwn4d you!   He showed that you are nothing but a partisan hack!

ME:  Huh.  So let’s recap, here; you’re referring to the “objectivity” and/or “hackery” of a guy who writes utterly-unveiled opinion pieces for a glorified blog, and has appeared for years on the radio as an expressly, even stridently-partisan commentator…

KRIEPPI:   Yes!  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

ME: …who interrupted his “non-partisan” “media” career for a gig as then-Senator Mark Dayton’s press secretary?

KRIEPPI:  …Hahahahahahahahahaahhahahahaaaahahaaahaahah… (maniacal laughter slowly grinds to a halt).

ME:  Who’s spent most of his career as a DFL stenographer and snark-bot,  but who will nonetheless dance up and down and say “You’re not a real journalist” because it’s a whole lot easier than explaining why a group of plutocrats and unions have basically bought the governorship and legislature with his blog’s blessing.

KRIEPPI: (stands, blank-faced)

ME: Hey, have a great day, Professor!

(I walk away as KRIEPPI slowly opens a carton of Reynolds Wrap and starts to wrap it around his head)

———-

Like I said, i don’t much care for the term “citizen journalist”.  Partly because it’s stilted and anachronistic, but mostly because In the modern sense of the term, it’s a little like saying “citizen carpenter”.  There’s no real barrier of entry to picking up a hammer and a saw – or a keyboard.

Oh, “professional” journos like to act like Journalism is a higher calling, like a secular monastic order.  Listen to Garfield and Gladstone doing “On The Media” on NPR sometime (somebody has to, right?); Krista Tippett’s “On Being” isn’t as pompous, solemn and brow-furrowed.   And it makes sense; “professional” journalists devote a lot of time to learning the craft, and years and decades practicing it – and usually spend their time covering city council meetings and interviewing high school athletes and boutique owners.  Of course they’ll try to give it some higher meaning!

But journalism is not a monastic calling.  It’s certainly not a profession.  It’s a craft, not much different than carpentry or CNC machining or cooking a good steak.   If I need a complicated metal part, I call a machinist.  If I want to know what happened in a city council meeting, or what was up with that car crash or house surrounded by police tape, and I’m not able or interested in asking the questions myself, I go to a “journalist”.  And if you want to know what’s really going on with charter schools, I go to someone who covers education because it’s their passion and interest and whose coverage of the issue engages me; it might be a reporter for an institutional media outlet, but it’ll more likely be Matt Abe and Speed Gibson, because they’re just plain better at it. 

Am I a reporter?  Not normally.  I do some reporting – I’ve eaten the rest of the media’s lunch on a few stories over the years, and I’ll do it again – but doing “reporting” right takes time. I have a day job, so I usually stick with analysis, or just plain opinion.  Sort of like a newspaper columnist, only without the salary.

So I don’t have a badge.  Either does Lambert.  He gets paid to snark and occasionally report.  I don’t.   He does it eight hours a day or so.  I do it for about 90 minutes.

Other than that, there’s not much difference, really.  Unless you start talking radio.

Pin that to your shirt.

SCENE:  MITCH is sitting with Inge “Lucky” CARROLL and Bridget GRETELSTEIN, operatives for the ABM (“Alita Buys Minnesota”), at the Champs in Mendota Heights.

MITCH:  (Continuing conversation that started before the scene) Well, yeah – ABM and the DFL’s message – pardon the redundancy – was aimed at low-information voters.

CARROLL(sitting with four empty cosmos in front of her):  Hah!  You are having teh meltdown!

BERG:  Er, huh?  “Meltdown”.

CARROLL:  Yes.  You are having teh meltdown.

BERG:  Well, no.  I’m pretty calm. Bored and waiting for a drink, actually.  Where do you get “meltdown?”

GRETELSTEIN:  It makes you uncomfortable, talking about your declining mental state.  Doesn’t it?

BERG:  No, it makes me uncomfortable that neither of you will answer a question about your organization’s cynical, factually-challenged campaign.  I’ve been documenting all your group’s lies for years now.  And I’m just amazed that so many people in our purportedly “above-average” state buy such a line of transparent BS.

CARROLL:  You’re so angry, you’re about to have teh stroke.

BERG:  What part of “bored and waiting on a drink” do you have trouble with?

GRETELSTEIN:  Don’t go all postal on us!

BERG:  Hm.  OK, I’ll see what I can do.  Hey, let’s talk about what the new DFL majority will inherit – since Democrats are all about babbling about things they inherited.  A balanced state budget, for starters.

(Silence for a few seconds as CARROLL and GRETELSTEIN look uncomfortably at each other).

CARROLL:  You are having teh meltdown.

(And SCENE)

I’ve finally followed through on my dream of writing an episode for a major TV drama.

In this case, it’s “Criminal Minds”, the long-running CBS police procedural about a group  of FBI criminal profilers who track mass-murderers.

I hope to hear back from CBS soon.

———-

SCENE:  A Gulfstream G4, silhouetted against a gorgeous sunset, winging its way southwest.  The voice of Special Agent Aaron HOTCHNER narrates in voiceover:

HOTCHNER: “Kurt Cobain wrote “Load up on guns, bring your friends. It’s fun to lose and to pretend“.

(Dissolve to interior of aircraft.  Agends HOTCHNER, REID, JAREAU, PRENTISS, MORGAN and ROSSI are sitting around a well-appointed table. ROSSI sips at a snifter of brandy.

MORGAN (The handsome and über-buff Afro-American agent who, notwithstanding the FBI’s dress code, is never not seen wearing form-fitting sports attire): Lincoln, Nebraska police report two waitresses sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled.

REID (the nerdy brainiac prodigy):  Sounds like a classic sexual sadist spree killer…

PRENTISS (the flinty raven-haired brunette with the enigmatic past): …with serious mommy issues.

HOTCHNER (The strung-too-tight leader who looks like “Greg” from “Dharma and Greg”):  Police say he turned up in their apartments with no sign of forced entry.

JAREAU (the blond eye-candy): So the vics let the unsub in.

ROSSI (the erudite sixty-something pioneer of the trade and oenophile): The unsub is almost certainly a white male, twenties through forties, victim of sexual abuse as a child…

PRENTISS:  Probably abandonment, too…

ROSSI: …right, and probably socially-accomplished, in great physical condition – most likely very vain, a bodybuilder type…

REID: …a real “lady-killer” if you pardon the term.

(MORGAN, JAREAU, ROSSI and PRENTISS grimace)
HOTCHNER:  Probably a complete stranger to the vics,but charming enough that they didn’t care…

REID:  The same basic MO that Ted Bundy used.

PRENTISS:  Every woman in Lincoln is a target.

JAREAU:  I’ll get a statement out to the media as soon as we land.

HOTCHNER:  Do we have anything else?  What are the Lincoln PD doing?

MORGAN: Tasing people who refuse to comply.

HOTCHNER: Well, it’s all we got.

PRENTISS:  And today’s Friday.

REID:  That means he could be striking again even as we speak.

(Agends furrow brows)

(Cell phone goes off in MORGAN’s pocket).

MORGAN (looks at phone).  It’s Garcia.  I’ll put you on speaker, Princess.

(MORGAN sets phone on table.  Notwithstanding that the G4 is cruising at 40,000 at 500 knots, the phone has and maintains four bars of signal reception, enough to get clear, skitter-free video of FBI macguffin technician technical analyst Chloe O’Brien Penelope GARCIA)

HOTCHNER: Go ahead, Garcia.

GARCIA:  Yo, yo yo, ma izzagents.  Here’s what we have so far.  Victims are 22 year old Danielle Larson, worked at a Perkins in Lincoln, and 21 year old Cathy Profett (Photos pop up on screen, superimposed alongside Garcia), who worked at a truckstop off the interstate.

PRENTISS: Both blond, high school grads, working their way through community college – Larson for nursing, Profett for tool and die fabrication.  You got the causes of death – both identical.

MORGAN:  What are their financials?

GARCIA: Already on it!  (Spreadsheets swirl across screen to superimpose over photos on phone screen).  Both low-income, but solvent.  Larson’s father is an insurance agent and alcoholic who had a fling in 1985 with a receptionist at their insurance office.  Proffett’s mother played fiddle in a country-western band in her twenties and owns a secret copy of Fifty Shades of Gray.

JAREAU (whispering to REID): I always wondered – how does she get all that info instantly, without a search warrant?

REID (whispering back):  My IQ is in four digits, and after seven years, I still haven’t figured it out.

ROSSI:  So other than age, gender, blonde and working-class, no real link.

GARCIA:  Wait, wait – this just coming in now.  We have a third vic.  22 year old Amy Rademacher.  Waitress at a Dennys on the west side.  She’s alive…

MORGAN: So something interrupted the unsub.

GARCIA: Correctamundo.  She also has a detailed physical description.  White, Male, late thirties, dark brown hair…

PRENTISS:  Yep…

GARCIA:  …and gushing blood from his chest…

REID:  Wait – that doesn’t fit the profile at all.  Unsubs of this type are almost always uninjured, in peak physical condition…

GARCIA: …where the victim shot the unsub six times at point blank range with the .357 snubnose revolver she carried.  And (checks scrolling panel on computer) yep, she has a valid Nebraska carry permit and… (pops up online data from a local Gander Mountain) shot better on her last day at the range than you did, oh tall, dark and handsome! (MORGAN blushes).

ROSSI (puzzled):  The victimology is all wrong!  Our vics are never able to fight back…

HOTCHNER:  This is big.  Very big.

GARCIA:  Lincoln police is bagging what’s left of him up right now (photo of blood-smeared floor and full body bag pulsates on the screen.  GARCIA waves at the screen). Toodles, unsub.

MORGAN:  Well done, Princess.

GARCIA:  Oh, you just made kitty purr!  OK – adios, muchachos!   (GARCIA bleems out).

PRENTISS:  Well, that settled that, I guess.

MORGAN:  Vics killing unsubs.  What’ll they think of next?

ROSSI:  Time to rewrite the book.

HOTCHNER (presses intercom button).  Pilot – take us back to Quantico.

(JAREAU brings up “Shot In The Dark” on her Macbook.  For next 56 minutes, camera focuses on her reading, cutting between her face and the rapidly-scrolling blog, as Jareau becomes  more fascinated the longer she goes).

(Shot dissolves to exterior of Gulfstream flying against the dusk,  Agent PRENTISS’ voice appears in narrative voice-over)

PRENTISS: P. J. O’Rourke once wrote “And so I said “let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us, Americans. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying ‘Cheerio.’  Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, f**k longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and sh*t them out before lunch.”

(And fade to black as credits roll).

———-

Waiting for a call from my agent even as we speak.

(SCENE:  A press conference on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol.  Gretel Anderson-Rage of the League of Women Voters, Mike Boing of Common Cause MN and Irving Blotnik of the ACLU-MN are hosting a group of speakers, as two reporters, a homeless guy, and Carrie Lucking (of Alliance for a Better Minnesota) look on.

BOING:  We are here to bring the voices of Minnesotans who will be disenfranchised by the Voter ID bill if it’s passed.  We have four speakers for you today.  I’d like to introduce the first; representing the Deceased-Minnesotan community, Elmer Torstengard.

TORSTENGARD:  (Looking a bit pale)  Hello dere.  I just want to make sure the rights of dead people are upheld  We worked long and hard for this country, and our voices deserve to be heard.  Why should the fact that I died in 1992 silence me?  (Shuffles back to seat)

ANDERSON-RAGE:  Thank you, Elmer.  We are here today to bear witness to the voter suppression inherent in this bill, which will disenfranchise 100,000… (LUCKING waves arms, points fingers upward) 200,000 (LUCKING frantically waves, points arms way up as she jumps) 500,000 (LUCKING frantically makes “go big” sign) Five Million Minnesotans.  One of them will be Jacob Hemmerling-Doltz, a student at Macalester and a representative of the Duplicate-American community.

HEMMERLING-DOLTZ:  Dude.  I’ve got candidates I support down at Mac, dude.  And back home in Madison, too, dude.  And in Uptown Minneapolis, where I stayed last summer when I was interning with MPIRG.  I’ve made my contributions in all three places, why should my voice not be heard in all of them, dude.  I mean, dude?  Hello?  And maybe Dinkytown  (Sits down)

BOING:  I regret to announce our third speaker, Ingrid Bloff, representing the Inattentive-American community, seems to have forgetten to attend today’s event.  So we’ll move right along to Mr. Mick Maus, who represents the Fictional-American community.

MAUS:  Yeah, like, who says I can’t be living in a laundromat with nine other characters….er, Minnesotans? Just because we don’t meet your antiquated Eurocentrist notion of “proof we exist” doesn’t mean our voices aren’t perfectly valid!   You can’t prove they’re not!  Where are the convictions, huh?  Where are the convictions?  You got nothing!  Suck it!  SUCK IT!

BLOTNIK: Thank you for your attendance.  Just a quick note, you may be breaking campaign finance law by being here, or reading about the event.  Or maybe not.  We haven’t decided.

BOING:  Thank you!

(Group leaves the steps as Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” plays on tinny loudspeaker)

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  Tarryl Clark, DFL candidate to run against Chip Cravaack, along with her aide Muffy Eisenberg-McDuffy, stands in front of a room full of DFL activists and media (pardon the redundancy).

CLARK:  I just want to express my sympathy to the people of Saint Cloud over all the tragic flooding.

EISENBERG-MCDUFFY: (sotto voce) Duluth!

CLARK: To the people of Duluth.  Sorry.

(And SCENE).

SCENE:  MITCH is talking with Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, a meme-buffer at Alliance For A Better Minnesota, at a Cathedral Hill bar.

CARROLL is sitting at a table with an empty martini glass, sipping a cosmpolitan from a second as MITCH approaches.

CARROLL:  We have teh best election system in teh world!

MITCH:  Um, OK – why do you say that?

CARROLL:  Because we get teh most people to teh polls!

MITCH: Well, OK – that’s cool as far as it goes, but if a significant number of those “people” at the polls are duplicate voters, or voters who aren’t supposed to be voting, then each of those votes negates the vote of someone who is entitled to vote, and only votes one time.

CARROLL:  That never happens in Minnesota.

MITCH:  Well, it’s been proven to happen.  The Minnesota Majority has brought hundreds of cases of felons voting and other people who weren’t supposed to vote to the Ramsey County Attorney, and gotten a few dozen election fraud convictions.

CARROLL: Only a few dozen of teh convictions!  Our system is teh PERFECT!

MITCH:  Well, no – because in Minnesota, unless you’re a paroled felon who hasn’t had is rights restored and who signed a piece of paper acknowledging you realize that not voting was part of your parole, pleading “I didn’t know” actually is considered an excuse.  And in every case, their votes were counted.  All of them.   Oh, yeah – and they busted a group home shoveling four – so far – vulnerable adults through the polls during the 2010 elections.  They were using the handicapped to stuff the ballots.  A county attorney basically used a grand jury to whitewash the empirical fact that four adults who are under guardianship, and under Minnesota statute have no right to vote, were registered to vote and voted absentee – basically had their ballots filled out for them by group home employees.   It’s full-blown corruption.

CARROLL:  So you want to disenfranchise teh people!

MITCH:  Blah blah blah.  Another stupid manipulative strawman – but hey, you work for Alliance for a Better Minnesota, so pardon my redundancy.  Nope, untrue.  Every who is entitled to vote should vote.

CARROLL:  Yabbut, what about teh elderly and students!  20% of them don’t have IDs.

MITCH:  OK, so two points, here.  For starters, isn’t it reasonable to ask people to assume a certain bare minimum of responsibility to exercise a franchise that over a million Americans have died defending?  And second:  all significant political parties have “get out the vote” efforts that make sure people get to the polls on election day.  So expand the effort to making sure people have IDs.  I mean, what – do I have to do all the thinking for you?

CARROLL:  See!  You want to disenfranchise teh people!

MITCH:  Er, Lucky?  I just described exactly why I don’t.

CARROLL:  Yeah, but…where’s my cosmo?

MITCH:  In front of you.

CARROLL:  Thanks.  (Drains a cosmopolitan, waves down a waitress).  But none of that is necessary.

MITCH:  Um, what?  “None of that is necessary?”  I’ve just shown you where hundreds of people voted illegally – and I didn’t even get into the credible allegations that students were voting in Minnesota and, via absentee ballot, in their home jurisdictions.

CARROLL:  But all of that is teh BS.

MITCH:  Um, why?

CARROLL:  Because we have teh best electoral system in teh world?

(WAITRESS appears at table)

MITCH:  She’ll have a cosmo.  I’ll have a double Laphraoig, neat.

WAITRESS:  Is she seeing unicorns again?

MITCH: You know it.

(And SCENE)

Gallupp rreleased its final digest of presidential approval numbers.

And throughout 2011, the news was bad for Obama.  His net approval was only above 50% in ten states plus DC, according to Gallup:

In 10 states plus the District of Columbia, a majority of residents approved of the job Barack Obama was doing as president last year, according to aggregated data from 2011. His greatest support came from District of Columbia, Maryland, and Hawaii residents, while Utah and Idaho residents gave him his lowest levels of support — below 30%.

Here are the state-by-state numbers.

Now, let’s remember it’s still early in the year, and that the Democrat noise machine and media (pardon the redundancy) willl eke out some more points for The One, and that this is an aggregate approval number, not a candidate-vs-candidate number.

And memes like “No president has ever (gotten some number or another) and still won the election” tend to be true until they’re not.

But if you accept the meme that no President with popularity below 50% has ever won re-election, and you apply that number state-by-state, it looks rought for The One, according to Conn Carroll at the WashEx:

Carroll (with emphasis added):

Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday, and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried. If President Obama carries only those states where he had a net positive approval rating in 2011 (e.g. Michigan where he is up 48 percent to 44 percent), Obama would lose the 2012 election to the Republican nominee 323 electoral votes to 215.

Again, that’s just popularity numbers based on the old “50%” meme.  Maybe it sticks,  maybe it doesn’t.

But bit by bit, I think this election might be doable – if we Real Americans don’t shoot ourselves in the foot.

I met my old friend, Inge Carroll (whom everyone calls “Lucky”) at a local watering hole to compare notes about politics the other day.  Lucky is a DFL operative.

CARROLL: So did you see teh article?  Teh Republican party said came into offices saying they were going to create jobs,but they have cost 16,000 jobs!

MITCH: For starters, why do you always pronounce “the” as “teh” after you drink cosmpolitans?  And then, huh?  You’ve missed the news? Minnesota’s unemployment rate is down.

CARROLL:  You are teh lier!  Didn’t you hear it on teh MPR?  Teh Republican policies have cost 16,000 jobs!  That means all of you Rethuglicons are TEH LIER!

(CARROLL orders another cosmopolitan)

MITCH: Um, what on earth are you talking about?  Minnesota is recovering from the recession faster than other states, largely because the GOP stood off Dayton’s orgy of taxes and regulations.

CARROLL:  Hah!  You didn’t read the article, did you?  You don’t even know what I”m talking about!

MITCH:  Well, that’d make two of us, if it were true – but yes, I read it. It says that because of LGA cuts, local government are having to either raise taxes, or cut government jobs, or both.

CARROLL:  Yep?  16,000 jobs!

MITCH:  OK.  Well, sorry to hear that – being out of work sucks. But what, you think government jobs are sacrosanct?

CARROLL:  Oh, I think people kind of like having teachers and firemen and cops and services.

MITCH:  Well, at face value, it looks more like people in towns around Minnesota like to have them – provided they can get someone else to pay for them.  When they have to pay for them themselves, not so much.

CARROLL:  (Glares at MITCH):   Why do you hate the troops?

(And SCENE).

Lucky had to get back to her job at “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, where she power-sands memes.

.One of the reasons that the left’s various attempts to counter the Tea Party have all failed, and will continue to fail, is that when you look at these hamsters, they just don’t look like America.  They look like superannnuated hippies and adenoidal poli-sci students and Macalester professors and the like.

And now, they’re bringing the magic to the Twin Cities:

Minneapolis, MN. – After this Saturday’s open forum in Stevens Square Park, through a group consensus, we now stand firm in our plans to unite at the Hennepin County

Government Plaza. This plaza is the new focal point for the OccupyMN movement.

Previously our plans were to stand in solidarity with those that occupy Wall Street by rallying at the steps of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

“Stand Firm?”  “Stand in Solidarity?”

Hey, “protesters”; Jane Fonda called; she wants her 40-year-old florid rhetoric back.

The plan has changed to reclaim the Government Plaza as the “People’s Plaza”.

It is time to establish a new system that values people over profits. We are the 99% and we are moving to reclaim our mortgaged future.

They’re going to “reclaim” big government property…for big government?

The Minnesota Occupation Begins:

October 7th, 2011 at 9:00am

The People’s Plaza (Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! – Ed)

300 South 6th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55487-0999

(Hennepin County Government Center Plaza)

I was briefly tempted to go there and videotape the Cantina Band scene that must certainly ensue.

Then I remembered – I have a family to spend time with, and an actual life.

(SCENE: Denise CARDINAL, head of Alliance for a Better Minnesota chair of the Minnesota DFL, wallks into her office, sits in an overstuffed chair)

(KEN MARTIN walks in to room).

MARTIN: “Hello…”

(MARTIN stops abruptly as CARDINAL motions downward with her index fingers.  MARTIN sighs, gets on hands and knees in front of CARDINAL’s char.  CARDINAL puts feet up on MARTIN’s back).

(REP. JOHN LESCH, who is minding the phones, buzzes in) “Mizz Cardinal, the party from the legislature is here to see you”.

CARDINAL: “Send them in please”.

(Tom BAKK, Paul THISSEN and Ryan WINKLER walk in.  Each bows deeply toward CARDINAL).

CARDINAL: Rise!

(All three take seats in overstuffed chairs around the room).

CARDINAL: OK.  What do we have?

BAKK: We think we have a plan!

THISSEN: Yes!  A plan!

WINKLER:  Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Let me hear it!

(THISSEN motions to WINKLER)

WINKLER:  Well, there’s this group, the “American Legislative Exchange Council“, or “ALEC”.  They are your run of the mill conservative activist group, run by Grover Norquist…

(BAKK, THISSEN and CARDINAL hiss theatrically)

WINKLER: …and they propose legislation and stuff, and lots of Republicans legislators have signed up with the group…

BAKK:  And if we can spin them as some big, shadowy conspiracy that tells affiliated legislators do to Grover Norquist’s bidding…

THISSEN:  Yeah! Grover Norquist!

WINKLER: Heh!  Heh heh heh!

CARDINAL:  Silence!  I like it! Winkler?

(WINKLER bows deeply)

CARDINAL: Start telling people that ALEC is a powerful, unaccountable group that wields boundless resources to pull the strings at the Minnesota State Legislature…

LESCH (Buzzes in) Mizz Cardinal?

CARDINAL (enraged) WHAT?

LESCH:  The Gentlemen are here.

CARDINAL:  Thank you. Send them in.

(CARDINAL makes a hand gesture to BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER, all of whom get up from their chairs and lie, face-down, on the floor, head-to-foot, from the door to CARDINAL’s chair)

(CARDINAL rises as Tom DOOHER enters the room in a long, black cape.  He is accompanied by Javier MORILLO, who is wearing a long purple cape.  DOOHER steps across WINKLER, THISSEN and BAKK’s backs to walk to CARDINAL, to whom he offers his hand.  CARDINAL kisses his pinky ring).

DOOHER:  Well?

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey.

MORILLO:  You heard the man! SOUND OFF!

CARDINAL, BAKK, THISSEN, WINKLER:  We hear and obey!

DOOHER: Very well.  Stand up, for Minnesota’s students.  (As BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER stand, DOOHER takes BAKK’s seat.  BAKK takes THISSEN’s, THISSEN takes WINKLER’s, who stands awkwardly).

DOOHER: Let us talk of the 2012 session…

(And SCENE).

(Scene: Sergeant BUCK SLAUGHTER,a 29 year old veteran of two tours overseas in the War on Terror, is  just home from his tour in Afghanistan.  Hestops by the Veterans Affairs office.  Looking worried he steps up to the desk.  ANASTASIA BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER  is sitting at the desk.

SLAUGHTER: Hello.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Take a number.

SLAUGHTER: I’m the only one here.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Then you shouldn’t have to wait long.

SLAUGHTER:  Um, OK.  (Takes a number).

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: (Waits, typing passive-aggressively for about 40 seconds.  Looks up at “Next Number” sign).  “Number 1”.

SLAUGHTER:  That’s me.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER:  (Grimaces). How can I help you?

SLAUGHTER:  Well, I’m just back from Afghanistan.  I just wanna know what I can do about education benefits, and also VA benefits for the shrapnel I got.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER:  (Hands SLAUGHTER a couple packets of information).  Anything else?

SLAUGHTER:  Well, yeah.  I’ve never been all that into politics, but I’m hearing that they’re going to cut funding for Veterans.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Oh, yes.  Republicans are trying to cut everything. Grandma, kids, veterans, even kittens.

SLAUGHTER: OK, well, what can we do?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: You need to call your state representative and demand that they put the following language into the budget… (goes on her computer):  ”

“Add specific language in The Ominous [sic] Bill…”

SLAUGHTER: “Ominous” bill?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Whatever.  Let me continue:

“…UES1047-2 on both sides (House and Senate) on page R19 when addressing any overall general cuts and on pages R20 and R21 at the opening of both Military and Veterans Affairs budgets.”

” To read:”

“In respect to the fact we are a nation at war at the Departments of Military and Veterans Affairs are paramount in those operations providing manpower…

SLAUGHTER: So far so good!

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: (continues)

…support programs and services, the following special consideration is hereby adopted for the Biennium ending 2013: The Department of Military Affairs and the Department of Veterans Affairs are to be held harmless to any budget cuts…

SLAUGHTER: Excellent!  They’ll hold all veterans benefits harmless!  Right?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: (continues)

…in salary, staff, FTE, personnel, equipment, programs and or services including any reductions of deputy commissioners, or the combining of commissioners of these two agencies.”

SLAUGHTER: Um – what’s that?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: We’re going to make sure nothing harms any of the program administrators or management!

SLAUGHTER: And what about the actual veterans?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER:  The what?

SLAUGHTER: US!  The veterans!

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Oh, yeah…

SLAUGHTER: US:  I mean, “holding harmless” the bureaucrats and administrators is like sending Military Police on patrol.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Don’t care.  Number two!

SLAUGHTER: There is no  number two.

(And scene).

SCENE:  The House Minority Caucus is meeting around a table at the Road Apple Saloon, at the Kelly Inn near the Capitol.  Paul THISSEN, Minority Leader, sits at a table with Debra HILSTROM, whips Larry HOSCH, Phyllis KAHN, Melissa HORTMAN, Alice HAUSMAN, John LESCH and Terry MORROW. They are joined by the rest of the DFL caucus around the table.

THISSEN:  OK, the caucus will come to order.

LESCH: He said come to order, you pigs…

THISSEN: John, that’ll do.  The first order of business is, we have to figure out how we’ll take the battle to the enemy.

Jim DAVNIE: Er, “Enemy?”

THISSEN:  The GOP.

DAVNIE: I knew that.

THISSEN:  We are outnumbered, of course – and the governor is, well…you know…

(The table murmers assent)

Rep. Ryan WINKLER: Ooooh!   Oooh!  I know.

THISSEN: Yes, representative…er,…

HOSCH: Binkley.

WINKLER:  That’s “Winkler”.  (HOSCH rolls his eyes)   I’ll go and tell everyone that “the real voter fraud is believing that the GOP cares about election integrity”.

THISSEN (absentmindedly): Sure, whatever.  Now, Alice – there’s some work that needs to be done on transportation…

WINKLER:  Oooh, oooh!  I got another one!

THISSEN (a little impatient): Er, yes, Representative Winkie?

WINKLER: Winkler, sir. I’ll tell the media that the GOP wants to kill poor womyn!

THISSEN (wearily):  Sure, whatever.  Alice, what can we…

WINKLER:  Oooh!  Ooooooooh!  I got it!

THISSEN:  For the love of Goddess, what, Representative Twinkle?

WINKLER: It’s “Winkler”, sir.  I’ll tell them that Amy Koch eats dog poop!

THISSEN:  Er, sure.  Get right on that.

(Winkler rises from table, exits the restaurant).

HAUSMAN: OK, I’ll get to work on that…

HORTMAN: Oh, my Goddess.  Paul, look…

(THISSEN turns up the volume on the TV, which shows WINKLER talking with a fake news crew)

THISSEN: My god.  The little twerp did it.

MORROW:  Good Wellstone, what a tool.

LESCH: Should I have him eliminated?

THISSEN:  No.  Not yet.  He may serve a purpose yet.  What was he going to say about Senator Koch?

(And Scene).

———-

OK, OK.  It’s a dig at Rep. Ryan Winkler (44B), who took a pretty unconscionable dig at all Republicans yesterday, claiming that the only voter fraud in Minnesota is the notion that we Republicans care about election integrity.

Winkler has become the Eddie Haskell of the Legislature.

And the claim itself really doesn’t deserve a dignified response; it’s just stupid.  Minnesota’s statistics look good, because the system is designed to make the statistics look good.  And it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are the most-documented victims of our state system’s weaknesses; military absentee ballots (which vote overwhelmingly GOP) have been systematically dispensed with since Mark Ritchie took office.

Republicans who seek election integrity have been a prime target for the DFL’s smear machine.  But you know what Gandhi said; first they ignore you.  Then Ryan Winkler mocks you.  Then they attack you.  Then you win.

More on the voter ID bill tomorrow.

SCENE:  At the headquarters of Jared ® Jewelry.   Patricia LOPEZ, the receptionist, is sitting at the front desk answering phone calls.

Phone rings.

LOPEZ:  Hello, Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

VOICE on phone: Hello, this is Sol Gallivan, the Guardian of Empiricism.  What does your slogan “It can only be Jared” mean?

LOPEZ: Hello again, Mr. Gallivan.  It means the same thing it did yesterday.  It’s an ad slogan.

GALLIVAN:  But it implies that all meaning comes from Jared ®.  How do you substantiate that claim?

LOPEZ:  I don’t.  Can I help you?

GALLIVAN:  Yes.  Explain how you figure all meaning comes from Jared ®?

LOPEZ:  I really can’t, sir.  It’s just a slogan.  Thanks for your call.

GALLIVAN: But I…

(Phone hangs up).

(LOPEZ continues typing an email).

(Phone rings)

LOPEZ: Good Morning, Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

GALLIVAN: Hello, this is Sol Gallivan, the Guardian of Empiricism.

LOPEZ: Hello again, Mr. Gallivan.

GALLIVAN: Could you please explain what you mean when your company says “it can only be Jared®?  Because it implies that there is some order to the universe, some eternal questions that are answered by your store.

LOPEZ: Yes, Mr. Gallivan.

GALLIVAN: Can you please tell me what those questions and answers are?

LOPEZ: No, Mr. Gallivan.

GALLIVAN: Because I’d like any empirical evidence that you have that your store actually imposes order on the universe.

LOPEZ: We’ll get back to you on that, sir.

GALLIVAN:  When exac…

(LOPEZ hangs up the phone).

(Jared LIGHT, CEO of Jared ®, walks in).

LIGHT: Hey, Patty.  What’s new?

LOPEZ:  Same as always.  That Gallivan guy is yapping about our ad slogan.

LIGHT:  (Yawns deeply).  OK.  Well, could you send one of the interns out for coffee…

(Phone rings.  LOPEZ holds up hand for a moment of quiet).

LOPEZ:  Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

VOICE (on phone):  Yeah, this is Jeff Buckstein, security director for Jared’s ® Maplewood, MN store…

LOPEZ: Hey, Jeff.

BUCKSTEIN: Hey Patty.  I just had security haul off that Gallivan guy.  He was standing outside the store, yelling at people who were walking in.

LOPEZ:  What was he doing this time?

BUCKSTEIN: Yelling at people coming in the store that “there is no scientific evidence that It could, indeed, only be Jared ®”.

LOPEZ: Criminy.

BUCKSTEIN:  Please pass the word, OK?

LOPEZ: Will do.  Thanks, Jeff. (Hangs up).

LIGHT:  Gallivan again?

LOPEZ:  Yep.

LIGHT: Maplewood again?

LOPEZ: Yep.

LIGHT: It’s gonna be one of those days.

LOPEZ: Yep.

(Phone rings)

LOPEZ: Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®…

GALLIVAN:  Hello, I’m Sol Gallivan, the Guardian of Empiricism.  I’d really like to know what you mean when you say “It can only be Jared…”

LOPEZ: It’s still just a slogan, Mr. Gallivan….

GALLIVAN:  I’m just wondering how you can sleep at night telling people untruths like…

(LIGHT motions to LOPEZ to give him the phone as GALLIVAN chatters away in the background).

GALLIVAN: …preying on the gullible and weak-minded…

LIGHT: Mister Gallivan?  This is Jared Light, CEO of Jared Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry®.

GALLIVAN: Mister Light, I’d like to ask you…

LIGHT: No, Mr. Gallivan, I’d like to ask you; if Jared Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry® is not what it can only be, what else can it be?

GALLIVAN: …

…

LIGHT:  Mister Gallivan?

(GALLIVAN hangs up the phone).

LOPEZ: Thanks, Mr. Light.

LIGHT:  No problem.

Mitch Berg is arriving for his press conference.  He takes his place behind the podium.  The press bustle forward to get the best spots in front of the podium.

Berg waves his hands, and the press gradually quiet down.

BERG: OK, for starters; everyone knows Tom Emmer has won the election, and that his inauguration is inevitable.  And so, while the election did fall within the statutory limit requiring a recount of the vote, as required by Minnesota State Law, I urge the DFL and the Dayton campaign not to interfere with the obvious inevitability of Emmer’s victory by pursuing the process that is legally mandated and out of their control anyway.

Furthermore, when the inevitable happens at the end of this mandatory process that the DFL should not pursue anyway, I urge Mark Dayton and the DFL from restraining their lawyers from filing stupid lawsuits, regardless of whatever grounds they say they may have, for a Better Minnesota. 

We especially urge the Dayton campaign to refrain from filing lawsuits over so-called “irregularities” or “fraud” in the process.  Everybody knows we have the best electoral system in the world, so it’s a moot point.

And when all those lawsuits are dismissed, I implore the DFL not to sic throngs of SEIU goons on Republican recount watchers, offices and the homes of GOP activists in revenge for their inevitable loss. 

I will now take questions.

ERIK BLACK: Er, Mitch?  Why are you calling Emmer’s victory “inevitable”? 

BERG: Because it is, and has always been.  Next?

RACHEL STASSEN-BERGER: Er, has there been any indication whatsoever from the Dayton campaign that they plan on filing frivolous lawsuits simply to pointlessly extend the recount process and delay the transfer of power?

BERG: You just report what I say, OK?  Next question.

TOM SCHECK: Er, this bit about “not raising objections over irregularities” – that is their legal right as part of this process…

BERG: Right, but it will only detract from the inevitability of Emmer’s victory.   It’s stupid, and just between the two of us, it’s a sign that they hate children.  Next?

TIM PUGMIRE: This reference to SEIU goons – where does that come from?

BERG: Look, I’m not saying that they will sic goons or lawyers on anyone.  Not at all.  You have the context all wrong.  I’m just saying that when they inevitably lose the recount and Governor Emmer is inevitably inaugurated – as every sensible person who doesn’t secretly yearn for child porn can say will happen, once this pointless yet legally-mandated recount is over – it’d be very bad for a party to sic hordes of union goons on those they disagree with.

MARTY OWINGS: But Mitch – nobody’s talking about siccing goons on anyone.

BERG: I’m just asking questions.

PAT KESSLER: That wasn’t a question.  That was  a statement.  You told the DFL to refrain from siccing goons on people if they lose the recount.

BERG: Well, that’s just common sense.  You want a good state, and  you believe in democracy?  Ixnay on the goons!

Final question?

BILL SALISBURY:   So to sum it up, you’re asking the DFL and Dayton to refrain from doing things they never said they were going to do in the first place, and decline to do things that are obligations that are out of their hands according to Minnesota law. 

BERG: Yep.  That, and not kill people for revenge when Tom Emmer’s inevitable inauguration takes place.  Thanks!

Berg leaves the stage, as Brian Melendez silently takes notes in the back of the room.