Chanting Points Memo: Beth Hawkins’ “Complete BS”

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If the Minnesoa left has a boogieman in this cycle, it’s the “American Legislative Exchanage Conference”, better known as ALEC.

Founded and run by that other perennial boogieman of the hysterial left, Grover Norquist, ALEC pushes a conservative agenda by hosting get-togethers and suggesting legislation to – wait for it – legislators.  Mostly conservative ones.

Sort of like the AFLCIO, the Ntaional Rifle Association, National Education Association, and practically every other  organization that  pokes is nose into legislation at the state level.

For the past year, a phalanx of leftybloggers and regional media have been passing on the meme hat ALEC is somehow different.  More sinister.

Some have called ALEC a “lobbying” group – which is odd, inasmuch as legislators actually pay to join the group.

Now,the coverage “coverage” of ALEC throughout the lefty alt-media has been utterly uniform in what it mentions (model bills!) and also what it omits (paid memberships), to the point that I’d bet money that the entire campaign is being run by “Media Matters” or some other lefty spin organization.

Just a hunch, mind you.

I bring it up because Beth Hawkins piece earlier this  week about an ALEC initiative on education legislation which reads in its entirety like a news release from a lefty attack-PR firm…

…but omits a number of the key facts that one might expect a “reporter” to provide in covering a “story” – the who, what, when yadda yadda.

Last week, the Minnesota House of Representatives did not meet on Thursday or Friday. The state Senate held a handful of hearings Thursday, but was in recess Friday.

Which was terribly convenient for those members of the Republican caucuses who are also members of the secretive, controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which recently issued members this invitation to a confab where it was to roll out its 2012 legislative agenda:

 

You can plug your nose and read Hawkins’ piece for the details,such as they are.

Hawkins channels Sally Sorenson, snarking that the recess “was terribly convenient” for liegislators who are also ALEC members.

So – who went?

Anyone?

Hawkins tacitly admits she hasn’t a clue – and tries to fob her negligence as a reporter off on the legislators:

If you want to know whether your elected official was one, you will have better luck calling and asking as a constituent than reporters have had.

It’s striaght out of Jesse Ventura’s “Conspiracy Theory”; lack of evidence is, itself, evidence of a coverup!

“It’s complete BS”, said a source on Capitol Hill familiar with the issue.  The source was not aware of any legislators attending the event – “maybe one”, and that seemed like a long shot.

Read the piece.  See if you can find anything in it that doesn’t look like it came from a press release.

And then remember Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection:  ”When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”

The left is harping on ALEC because the the left’s pressure groups – “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota”,and the various unions’ political arms – are about to launch a wave of smear and noise that dwarfs ALEC by many orders of magnitude.

It’s what the media – “alternative” and otherwise does; create whispering campaigns about conservative conspiracies to draw attention away from the real thing.

I’m open to other explanations.

The Paper Bull

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Last week, when I wrote about the stirrings of backlash on the part of some Catholic activists and Bishops over the Obamacare requirement that Catholic hospitals provide contraception and abortions, I expressed my doubt that mainstream Catholics really cared that much.

I got a few Catholics sounding off in my comment section that sounded a little more bellicose than I expected.

Chad the Elder over at Fraters – who is, unlike me, Catholic – is a lot less sanguine:

Many Catholics seem all too willing to erect their own wall between church and state and like to pretend that their politics has nothing to do with the Catholic Church and vice versa. The problem is that when the government breaks through that barrier and injects itself into the affairs of the Church by attempting to force it to accept policies that violate core tenants of its beliefs, the illusion of this happy little coexistence is shattered.

Does it?

I’m not trying to be snotty, there – it’s a genuine question.

If people have little tangible investment in the practical results of religious freedom – if it’s more an intellectual and rhetorical parlor game than an immediate, vital part of their life – then will it “shatter” so much as “melt like stale jello?”

Well, at least it would be if the Church were more consistent and forceful in explaining exactly what is taking place and why it matters to American Catholics.

There’s that, too.  Leaving aside that the laity themselves, to my observation, seem to think it’s an issue well above their pay grade, I have a strong hunch that a good chunk of the Catholic hierarchy is lukewarm on upsetting the progressive applecart.

For whatever reason, Elder’s observations seem to be in tune with mine:

My experience may not be typical, but so far little word of this current controversy has surfaced in our parish on any given Sunday. A few months ago, there was an insert in the bulletin that touched on it. Since then, nothing. No homilies, no presentations, no mention in the weekly bulletin. The only thing related to politics that has merited attention has been on the marriage front, with updates on the Minnesota Marriage Amendment appearing in the last few bulletins. But nothing on the Obamacare rules which are a direct threat to the freedom of the Catholic Church to exercise its religious beliefs.

In order for there to be action, there needs to be a call for it first. I fear that too many Catholic leaders are still reluctant to sound it.

And while I’m assured by many Catholic friends that some of the post-John-Paul-2 clergy is more conservative, I have serious questions as to whether that’s filtered down to an awful lot of lay Catholics and their immediate leadership.  Chad’s observations don’t do much to dissuade me.

Of course, it’s similar in my own Presbyterian church (where, to be fair, the problem is opposite; an extremely liberal elected temporal leadership representing congregations that are frequently much more conservative.

Tomorrow: Time To Stand Up For Stand Your Ground

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Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill – which would make legal self-defense a more tenable option for law-abiding Minnesotans – is coming up for another hearing in the Senate tomorrow.

For the second straight day, I’m going to urge all Second-Amendment supporting Minnesotans to get on the phone.  These Senators are all pretty much in line to support HF1467/SF1357:

They could use a call to encourage them, but mainly thank them for their continued support for Civil Liberties in Minnesota.

Three more Senators on the committee - Terri E. Bonoff, Barb Goodwin and Linda Higgins – are worthless Metrocrats.  Rust-encrusted enemies of civil liberty, none of them is worth the time it’d take to contact them.

The last two…

…are outstate DFLers, representing the kind of people who, though they’re DFLers, haven’t drunk all the statist Koolaid.  Langseth has indicated he’s not running for re-election, and he’s likely sold his vote for the DFL’s customary 13 pieces of silver.  But Stumpf, with some polite, reasoned pressure from Real Americans and Real Minnesotans [1], might be turnable.

So please – take a moment to email or (especially) call today; the hearing is tomorrow.

Remember – have them support HF1467/SF1357.

[1] Yeah, I went there.  Whatchagonnadoabout it?

Dialog, Part II: Your Plan B

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A few weeks ago, I did an article about the tense-to-nonexistant relationship between conservatives and the media.  Any media.  Even media that strives in its own way for detachment.

Conservatives just don’t trust the media.

The context, of course, was a conversation I had with Melody Ng, who works for the “Public Insight Network” at American Public Media, the national/syndicated programming arm of Minnesota Public Radio.   She’s found the attempt to engage conservatives – one of her job goals – for feedback and as sources is frustrating.

My theory – conservatives distrust the media on a level that’s become ingrained in core conservative thought.  And that distrust, as a rule, is utterly warranted; with many in the media the perspective on events, politics and life in general is so different, it makes basic communication difficult.  Here was a recent example that points to the statement “they don’t get us, and we don’t get them”.

Now, for the entire life of this blog one of my theses has been that conservatives need to engage in the larger culture; everything from sports to art to the media.  There can be as many reasons for this as there are conservatives; to promote better communication, to learn more, to teach the rest of society that conservatives are not the stunted caricatures that so much of the media describes to the rest of society today, or to co-opt and neutralize the media.

Which isn’t making Melody Ng’s job any easier.

So I offered Melody something I rarely offer anyone – a shot at reaching the SITD audience directly by posting something here on Shot In The Dark.

As it happens, Ms. Ng is curious about the same thing I am; what is everyone’s “Plan B”, should “your” candidate not get the nomination. (For a variety of reasons, it came in just a tad late for pre-caucus discussion; I figured it was still plenty timely).

Is the (primary) party over? Or is the Republican Party just getting started? 

It’s barely February. Super Tuesday is still to come, and it’s a long way to August in Tampa. Yet some seem ready to call the race for Republican presidential nomination.  This after a month of fairly unprecedented and brutal finger pointing among GOP hopefuls over who best represents conservative values in America.

What’s a non-Romney Republican to do?

This blog’s host, Mitch Berg, suggested that I find answers by going directly to you, his readers, and asking: “What’ll you do if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination?”

So where do you stand?

Fill us in on your Plan B here. 

This question was inspired by lively conversation here on Shot in the Dark, and Hot Air around Mitch’s post advising “‘Anybody But Mitt’ Republicans” to vote Romney should he get the party nod.  But discussions about this are happening in all kinds of venues, physical and virtual.

I decided also to check in with our sources at the “Public Insight Network (PIN), 140,000 people like you who share their expertise to help reporters across the country cover the news.  In recent months, many have been telling us how their life experience influences their preference to presidential candidates.

I tapped PIN sources whose candidates of choice have dropped out or refused to run.  Among them, supporters who favored Bachmann, Rubio, Perry, Cain, Palin, Pawlenty, Christie, Ryan and Huntsman.

Their responses varied, but there was a strong current of Republican over Democrat, even if it wasn’t their favorite Republican.

This from Jay Maynard, of Fairmont, Minn., who backed Herman Cain, but now says he’ll vote from Romney: “The duty of the Republican Party is to nominate and work to elect the most conservative electable candidate. … The goal is to limit Barack Obama to one term in office.”

James Murphy, a Libertarian from Austin, Texas, and Rick Perry fan, will strive to get the GOP nominee, whoever he is, into office:  “Of the candidates who remain, not a one of them is worse than Obama.”

Another Texan, Jackie Thompson of Longview, agrees.  Perry was her favorite as well – she’s “as conservative as a person can be about wanting a small government and in all fiscal matters.”  But now that Perry is out, she says, “I’ve known all along that I will vote for whoever is the Republican nominee.  I am not going to vote for a Democrat for president, period.”

As strong as that sentiment is, it doesn’t seem to be universal. Two respondents – both Huntsman supporters – declared they now might vote for Obama.  Said Chris Eriksen, a self-described “Federal Libertarian-State Socialist” from Arden Hills, Minn., it’s about deft foreign policy, the skill he values most in a president.  He finds Obama the most “statesmanly” candidate now that Huntsman’s gone.

A third Plan B is to shift efforts away from the presidential campaign and to other power positions in support of one’s beliefs.  Example:  Richard Mulholland, a Perry guy.  Well before his state’s presidential primary, he had already moved on.

“The Congressional races are more important,” Mulholland said. “At this point I am indifferent about the remaining presidential candidates. Would I have preferred someone else? Sure. But all of my preferred candidates have withdrawn. … In the fall, I will be happy with anyone my neighbors will have chosen from the remaining field.”

How about you?  Is your first choice for president still in the race?  If not, how will you remain involved?  Is there a line between getting a Republican in the White House and your own values?

Please share your story here.  Reporters across the nation want to know what’s driving your vote.

By responding, you’ll help them tell the story of this election, voter by voter, and you’ll become one of our expert sources in the PIN.  Then we’ll contact you from time to time about topics you know and care about – all for news coverage.

By the way, if you haven’t decided yet who you’re supporting for president, give Minnesota Public Radio News’  ”Select A Candidate a whirl.

The interactive, GOP primary/caucus tool doesn’t tell you whom to vote for – Would you follow advice from public radio? – but after asking you a series of questions about issues from abortion and immigration policy to the tax code, it tells you which GOP candidate your views most closely align with.  I got Newt Gingrich.

Happy caucusing tonight, Minnesotans and Coloradans!  And a good rest of your primary to you, Missourians!  I hope to hear from you soon.

Many thanks to Melody.

So -discuss!


I Guess I Wasn’t The Only One

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There apparently are a lot of Republicans out there who aren’t ready to accept Mitt Romney as “inevitable” just yet.  Santorum won Minnesota, and won pretty big.

The PiPress:

Santorum’s victory in Minnesota, combined with a win in the nonbinding Missouri primary and another win in Colorado’s caucuses, is almost certain to prolong the Republican nominating contest and make the former Pennsylvania senator, not Gingrich, the conservative alternative to the more moderate Romney.

Speaking in Missouri, Santorum said the votes there and in Minnesota “were heard loud and louder all across this country.”

The Minnesota results marked a reversal for Gingrich, who had been Romney’s strongest challenger.

Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley told the Pioneer Press his candidate’s strong showing makes him the biggest threat on Romney’s right.

Conservatism’s not rolling over and playing dead.

If Romney wants this nomination – or spare himself and the party quite a few Maalox moments on the way – he’s gotta step up his conservative game.

Chopping Obamacare would be a great start.

Farewell to Arms

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Florence Green - WWI's Grandmother

World War I now belongs only to history.

The last surviving veteran of what H.G. Wells foretold would be “the war to end wars” (and was later modified by Woodrow Wilson as the more famous quote “the war to end war”), has passed away.

Florence Green joined the RAF as a mess steward at 18, just two months before the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918.  She could have had little notion that amid some of the most frantic fighting of the war, as the Allies pounded the Château-Thierry salient in the Battle of Amiens, undoing the summer gains of the German Army’s last ditch attempt to force a conclusion to the Western Front, that the war would be shortly over.  Nor could Florence Green have likely envisioned that a conflict that took or injured 35 million lives would spare her until nearly 111 years of age.

The “World War I generation”, if such a term can even be coined, has long since passed as the few surviving modern links to the conflict vanished.  The last combatants, Charles Choules of the British Navy and Frank Buckles of the U.S. Army, died early last year.  The German debt from the Treaty of Versailles was only paid off in September of 2010.  Even the geopolitical and cultural effects of the war have significantly faded, as Germany and France battle not for European supremacy but jointly to keep the rest of Europe’s crippling debt from dominating them.

With nothing seemingly remain to tie the past to the present, how will World War I truly be remembered now that it’s final judgement is in the hands of history?  Will it be seen as the touchstone for the creation of the modern world, ending the age of European empire?  Or will Florence Green, Frank Buckles and others become future Yves Prigents, the last survivor of the Crimean War – trivia notes for wars of senseless and forgotten ages.

Florence Green’s passing changes nothing about our view of World War I – right now.  The “Great War” was seen as incomplete in its own era, and increasingly became a bloody footnote to the conflict that resolved the question of whether Europe (and thus the world) would be dominated by Anglo-Franco democratic sensibilities or Prussian authoritarianism.  Such thoughts today seem as foreign as an Austro-Hungarian Empire, or that an assassination of an Archduke nearly 98 1/2 years ago in Sarajevo could spark a global war.  Heck, plenty of people don’t even remember the conflict in Bosnia & Herzegovina in the 1990s.

The task of preserving the significance of World War I, indeed any war, falls not on the Florence Greens of the world nor historians.  It falls a little on everyone to remember such sacrifices and remind the next generation why they mattered.

Where Used Car Salespeople Fear To Tread

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Say what you will about the Minnesota Poll and the Hubert H. Humphrey poll.  As bad, inaccurate, DFL-biased and seemingly-rigged as both are, they both actually release their cross tabs – such as they are.

So far.

With the WaPo’s new practice of sitting on the data for their polls - which, naturally, show that Barack Obama has bounced back – I don’t expect that to last for long.

Ed Morrissey wrote about the new practice:

More importantly, though, the poll series has dropped its reporting of partisan identification within their samples.  It’s the second time that the poll has not included the D/R/I split in its sample report, and now it looks as though this will be policy from this point forward.  Since this is a poll series that has handed double-digit partisan advantages to Democrats in the past (for instance, this poll from April 2011 where the sample only had 22% Republicans), it’s not enough to just hear “trust us” on sample integrity from the Washington Post or ABC.

One cannot determine whether Obama’s improvement in this series is a result of the State of the Union speech, as Dan Balz and Jon Cohen suggest, or whether it’s due to shifting the sample to favor Democrats more so than in previous samples.  The same is true for the Post’s report that Obama “for the first time has a clear edge” over Romney head-to-head.  One would need a poll of registered or likely voters to actually make that claim (one has to register to cast a vote, after all), and one would need to see the difference in partisan splits between this and other surveys in the series to determine whether the movement actually exists or got manufactured by the pollster.

Expect the effort to get Obama re-coronated to result in the extinction of whatever passes for “Journalistic Standards” in the polling industry.

Time To Stand Up For Stand Your Ground

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Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill – which would make legal self-defense a more tenable option for law-abiding Minnesotans – is coming up for another hearing in the Senate Thursday.

The bill – which got side-tracked in the last session, amid a mass of inaccurate and dishonest reporting on the issue – is a must-pass for this session.  And I think it’s fair to say if the GOP allows it to die this time, a lot of gun-owning Minnesotans are going to wonder when they’ll get some payback for all their commitment.

I’m going to urge all you Second-Amendment supporting Minnesotans to get on the phone.  These Senators are all pretty much in line to support HF1467/SF1357:

They could use a call to encourage them, but mainly thank them for their continued support for Civil Liberties in Minnesota.

Three more Senators on the committee - Terri E. Bonoff, Barb Goodwin and Linda Higgins – are worthless Metrocrats.  Rust-encrusted enemies of civil liberty, none of them is worth the time it’d take to contact them.

The last two…

…are special cases.  They’re outstate DFLers, representing the kind of people who, though they’re DFLers, value civil liberty.  Langseth has indicated he’s not running for re-election, and he’s likely sold his vote for the DFL’s customary 13 pieces of silver.  But Stumpf, with some polite, reasoned pressure from Real Americans and Real Minnesotans [1], might be turnable.

So please – take a moment to email or (especially) call today and tomorrow.

Remember – have them support HF1467/SF1357.

[1] Hyperbolic?  Maybe. Probably not.

Why I’m Caucusing For Santorum

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I agree with what Mitt Romney (I think – maybe it was Huntsman) said in one of the opening GOP candidate debates; any of the people on the stage, then and now would do a better job of rebuilding this country than Barack Obama.

Including Romney.

I’m not thrilled with Romney; I think the Gingrich camp’s attacks have verged on the hysterical, and swerved way too far into Alinsky for my taste; Romney certainly did the same in return.  And I’ll allow that there’s some context to his very “moderate” record in Massachusetts; a legislature that verged on Maoist, a state that was so far to the left that John Huntsman would have looked like Gengis Khan.  Still, that’s what we have to go by – that, and his impressive business and executive record.

And Ron Paul?  I used to be a Big-L Libertarian.   And Ron Paul certainly has uncovered the wellspring of inner libertarians – big and small “L” – that I always knew was out there.  I’d love it if Ron Paul were both a viable candidate and a credible choice for President.  I sincerely hope Rand Paul becomes both in the next four to eight years.

But tonight I’m going to caucus for Rick Santorum.  Not because I think he’s necessarily the best candidate – his record on spending and economic issues is adequate-to-good; he’s most famous as a social con, and his credentials there are truly impeccable, but it’s not my turf.

But I’m doing it mainly because if Mitt Romney really is “inevitable”, at least he’s going to know at least one GOP activist – and every one I can convince to follow suit – isn’t handing over his support merely because Mitt’s got a “GOP” behind his name.

Promise to repeal Obamacare?  Start listing cabinet departments that’ll be cut?  In addition to the parts of the Romney platform that do make conservative sense (and there are parts)?  We can talk business.

But for now?  Romney’s not inevitable with me.  Not yet.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

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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)

Into The Vortex

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The management at the Strib has apparently decided that even Lori Sturdevant’s grueling one-column-a-week schedule at the paper just isn’t enough.  Now, she’s got a blog.

And there’s another surprise; even Lori Sturdevant has found a left-on-right attack that’s ruffled her feathers; Rolling Stone’s hit piece on Michele Bachmann (you expected any other kind) linking her to the gay teen suicides in Anoka County apparently even pushed her too far:

Rolling Stone magazine’s Feb. 16 issue stretches farther than this Minnesota journalist would in an otherwise compelling article about the suicides of nine LGBT teens in the Anoka-Hennepin School District and the school “neutrality” policy that served them poorly.

(Am I being overly picky in asking “how far would “this Minnesota journalist stretch to attack Michele Bachmann?  Or does Sturdevant need those “layers and layers of fact-checking and gate-keeping” more than we thought?  No matter; it’s a tangent, I know)

The stretch is the story’s attempt to link the suicides with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, the area’s three-term congresswoman and, until last month, a GOP presidential candidate.

Of course, Rolling Stone has become the City Pages of national magazines; both publications, once occasionally the home of some adequate and sometimes brilliant journalism, have turned into the Daily Kos with band tour dates (or in the case of City Pages, the Strib comment section with restaurant and music  reviews).

Anyway – welcome to blogging, Lori!  And don’t let the avalanche of suck that is the Strib’s comment section get you down.  It sure would do it for me.

“But How Does Excessive Regulation Kill Jobs?”

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The GOP’s plan to help the economy by, among many other things, dialing back regulation, makes intrinsic sense if you have the faintest sense of how business works.

Most liberals do not.  They think jerbs are created when government submits a funded work order, all too often.

Worse?  When you talk to too many libs about reducing regulation, they say “Hey!  Regulation gives us safe water and clean air!”

To which one is tempted to reply “Yes, and we’re not talking, largely, about those regulations, and would it be possible to have enough government and the right amount of regulations, rather than too much of both?”

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

You thought that because the City approved all your permits, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars to open a business here?

SUCKER!

I followed the link to a PiPress story; one Kevin Vanderaa, owner of a Minneapolis bakery called “Cupcake”, wanted to open another location on Grand Avenue.  He had everything squared away – or so he thought.

We pick up with the PiPress story:

Vanderaa signed a lease in July to open in the former Wonderment Toy Store, between Lexington Parkway and Dale Street. Unlike the Minneapolis Cupcake location, this one was to have a 32-seat wine bar along with a bakery and cafe. At the time, he didn’t know that because he was going to serve beer and wine he would need more parking spaces. The city held up the business license until he could secure a shared parking arrangement or a parking variance for seven spaces required by the Board of Zoning Appeals.

“But people gotta park…!”

Have you been to Grand Avenue lately?

Bear in mind, these are jobs.  Not “infrastructure” jerbs, like the jerbs Governor Dayton is yapping about in his pork-laden bonding bill, temporary jobs that’ll go to Dayton’s union buddies and disappear as soon as the “infrastructure” is built.  Real jobs, that last as long as the business lasts.

The kind of jobs that the DFL extinguishes with gay abandon.

For your own good, of course:

“Everyone wants Cupcake on Grand Avenue,” said McLean Donnelly, vice president of the association. “But there’s a right process of setting up parking with businesses on Grand Avenue, and if the correct process had been in place, we’d be enjoying cupcakes right now.”

Let those unemployed people eat process!

In December, Vanderaa got a signed lease from nearby Anderson Cleaners for the parking spaces. The Zoning Board approved it Dec. 27 with a 10-day period for appeals. Vanderaa said he thought the appeal period began the day it was approved by the board. When 10 days had passed, he began construction. The floor was ripped out and pumping and electrical were started.

But at 5 p.m. Jan. 19, even though the Zoning Board already had given its OK, the Summit Hill Association filed an appeal, citing that Vanderaa should have had a shared parking agreement instead of a lease with Anderson Cleaners. Vanderaa was stunned because he thought the appeal period had passed. Later, he found out it hadn’t actually begun until Jan. 9, when the lease was officially voted on and signed off by the St. Paul City Council. The city then notified Vanderaa that his permit was being pulled.

Did you follow that?

Now, you might say “that’s just a bunch of city regulations” – and you’re right.  But DFL government behaves like liberal government, at all levels; regulations have boomed under Obama, under Dayton, and of course in Saint Paul under 60 years of DFL rule (with a 12 year break under Coleman and, to a lesser extent, Kelly).

Take the problems facing Mr. Vanderaa at “Cupcake”, and apply them to something in the state’s kill zone – say, the Polymet mine project up on the Iron Range.  Like Saint Paul, the Iron Range desperately needs jobs.  Like Saint Paul, there are markets to be filled on the Range; yuppie fans of cupcakes (which, MPR tells me, is the latest pop-culture fad) on Grand, a world hungry for industrial minerals like Polymet will produce).

And on the Range, as in Saint Paul, regulations – controlled, inevitably, by political as well as bureaucratic interests – stymie Polymet with every-bit-as-tight a stranglehold as they do “Cupcake On Grand”.

Donnelly said the information provided to the Board of Zoning was inconsistent and there were several unresolved technical questions the board hadn’t pinned down.

“People think we’re singling out this business,” Donnelly said. “But if Vanderaa gets a parking variance, it can impact other businesses on Grand Avenue. And a variance stays with the property and not ownership. If the parking situation is a mess, we’re stuck with it.”

Look at the bright side; nobody’s building a train down your street.

But the real point is, regulation kills jobs.  And while most of our society accepts some regulation – speed limits, pollution limits in water and air, medical licensure and the like – there’s a thick gray line between “The government and regulation we need” and “Government and regulation that really exists only to give government something to do at best, and serve as the policy manifestation of some special interest or another at worst”.

And that kills jobs faster than any “infrastructure” project can possibly replace them.

It’s Reagan’s Birthday!

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While we won’t be doing the traditional Reagan’s Birthday family dinner tonight, there’ll be jelly beans for all at work today.  It’s Reagan’s Birthday!

Today would be the 101st birthday of the greatest president of my lifetime, so far.

It’s hard, and a little humbling, to admit that I was a flaming liberal who deeply feared (as deeply as a bobble headed 17 year old can do anything) Reagan when he was elected.

I was about a month too young to vote in 1980, and had I been that month older I’d have voted for…well, not Jimmy Carter.  I knew he was a disaster, as liberal as I was.  I’d have voted for John Anderson, probably.  Reagan, I just knew,was going to lead us to war in Saudi Arabia over oil, and end up getting us all nuked!

The media said so!

And it was over the next four years that Reagan, his example, his style and his leadership – along with some acerbic coaching from my college professor, Dr. James Blake, who may have been the only English professor in the past century to convert students to conservatism – converted me.  It seemed like a gradual thing back then, and I suppose it was, although four years is nothing.

And in 1984, while I didn’t tell my parents – my mom would likely have disowned me – I pulled the lever for Reagan.  And have, like so many other conservatives, kept him before me as an example of how conservatism should work.

There are examples in Reagan’s story for conservatives to remember today.  Reagan was a coalition-builder; he built “big tents”, not by offering something to everyone, but by convincing others that his way was the right way.  He started with a vision, and focused like a laser beam, delegating everything that didn’t lead to achieving that vision.  He shook off the negative with a wry quip, and kept his focus.

He never once used the term RINO.  He issued his eleventh commandment; focus on the 70% of things you agree on, rather than bashing them for the 30% you don’t.

I strongly recommend reading “Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became An Extraordinary President“, by Dinesh D’Souza; it captured, more than anything I’ve ever read, the essence of Reagan.  It’s worth climbing mountains to find.

In trying to explain Reagan to people who weren’t there, it’s hard to know where to start.  The economy was in the crapper?  And under Reagan, it came roaring back?  That’s a good place to start, naturally; kids today can identify what what us kids from 1980 faced.

In terms of the world, though?  Our kids grew up in a world with threats – terrorists who’d lop of Americans a few, or once a few thousand, at a time.  But it was nothing like the Armageddon that seemed to lurk around the corner in 1980.  Both of my kids were born after the fall of the USSR.  And so this speech – one of the pivotal ones in western civilization…:

…doesn’t mean much.

I turn to this story, with its Tolkein-ish overtones, to try to explain what it was Reagan, and we all, faced.  It’s a story with overtones today – only our Jaruzelski was an organizer, not a soldier.

And so conservative Americans, and tens of millions of Eastern Europeans, and I all join together in celebrating the birthday of the best American president of the past 100 years, and one of the five best in history.

14,000-Odd Posts

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2612 weekdays of waking up at 5:30AM and writing til 7-ish.

520 weeks of following the Minnesota news cycle.

Two Presidential, three Gubernatorial, three Senate and 32 Congressional contests, plus five complete legislative election cycles and 11 Legislative sessions.  One wrestler ushered out of office; one Senatorial plane crash and two electoral train wrecks covered.  The decline of two major cities chronicled (keep checking back, that story’s not done).  One complete conversion, from conservative public school supporter to implacable enemy and charter school zealot.

A national convention, three major state conventions.

A couple of dozen Instalanches, and heaven knows how many Hot Air-alanches.

Two desktop and three laptop computers gone through, along with three blogging platforms and counting.

Hundreds of Nick Coleman, Lori Sturdevant and Brian Lambert columns and “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” memes disposed of.

Dozens of leftyblogger attacks met, trashed, humiliated and, in more than a few cases, out-lived.  One Soros publication outlasted.

Decades?  One.  So far.  Working on number two.

This one kinda snuck up on me; Shot In The Dark turns ten years old today.  And when I say “snuck up on me”, I mean, yeah – I knew after last year’s “ninth anniversary” that there would likely (God willing) be a tenth.  But I woke up this morning and it kinda smacked me upside the head.

I’ve told the story a bunch of times – including every year on this anniversary; I started this blog in 2002, at a time when, after fifteen years out of talk radio, with two kids and working at a failing dotcom, I was keenly feeling the absence of an outlet for my inner pundit.  I read an article in Time about the “New Breed of Conservative Intellectuals”, featuring – ahem – Andrew Sullivan.  The piece mentioned Sullivan’s main outlet – his “blog”.  There was a little sidebar piece on “What Is A Blog”, which led me to “Blogger.com”.  At home from work that night, I started the original Shot In The Dark.  And other than a week off at the end of 2003, and a few odd days off here and there, I think I’ve had something up every weekday, and most weekends, since then.  At the time, I plugged it on a couple of E-Democracy forums, and held steady at about 10 hits a day for the first nine months or so.

My traffic has grown, and remained, really big by regional standards since then.  But as I’ve said for years, I have always done it for me, and would still do it if I were my only traffic.  The blog has brought an avalanche of blessings, the greatest of which has been a great group of friends – Brian, Atomizer, Sisyphus and Chad (an email from Brian was the first indication I found that there were other bloggers in the Twin Cities, back in mid-2002), Ed, John and Scott, Mr. D, King Banaian (whose blog is offline for the duration of his legislative career, which for Minnesota’s sake had best be long and successful), Brad Carlson, Michael Brodkorb and his various successors at MDE, James Lileks, Learned Foot, Derek and Nancy and Guy and the whole crew over at the Dogs, Katie, Gary, Sheila, Pianomomsicle,  Ringer, Roosh, Bogus, and the entire True North syndicate, and the whole MOB, really, which led to the radio show (which is itself headed for an anniversary next month).  Beyond that, it’s been a long train of personal and intellectual growth – or maybe “growth” – and a constant introduction to opportunities that I’d never dreamed of ten years ago.

So I’d still do it just for myself – but I’m glad I don’t have to!

Anyway – thanks to all your regular readers, and the new friends (and occasionally adversaries) that’ve popped up over the past (gulp) decade.  God willing and with a tailwind, we can do it again!

NARN On Ice!

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Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism – with ice-fishing thrown in to boot!  We’re broadcasting from the “Holes for Heroes” event, on Medicine Lake.   The event is a benefit for veterans; we hope you can make it, or at least pitch in to this most worthy cause.

  • Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.
  • Ed and I will be on from 1-3PM.  Today, in addition to “Holes for Heroes” talk, we’ll be talking with Rep. JC Watts, who’s in town to pitch for Newt Gingrich before the caucuses, and with GOP Senate candidate Tony Hernandez!
  • The King Banaian Show! - King is on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  Join him from 9-11!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

  • AM1280 in the Metro
  • streaming at AM1280’s Website,
  • On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
  • UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream) .
  • Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
  • Podcasts are now available on the AM1280 page!  (Ed and I are #2 – Brad is #3).
  • And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

All That Glitters Isn’t Intelligent

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A while ago, I issued a challenge to supporters of single-sex marriage, and opponents of the proposed Constitutional Amendment on the issue this fall; develop an argument that’ll convince a majority of Minnesota voters that you’re right about the issue.

For a fair chunk of that audience, the “argument” has been expressed as simply chanting “you’re a bigot”, which is a stupid argument.

For another fair chunk, the argument reverts to chanting “we don’t vote on civil rights”, which is a nice platitude.  Also bullcrap.  We vote on civil rights all the time.  Ask any second amendment supporter or opponent of campaign finance “reform” / speech rationing, or academic freedom activist, or anti-”Fairness Doctrine” watchdog.  And that completely avoids the question “is marriage a civil liberty”.  I don’t know that I support the Amendment – but I know that all the best arguments against it come from conservatives.

The dumbest argument of all?  Glitter.

It’s become a fad among the local cutesy-but-inartciulate crowd in the past year; if you can’t manage an actual adult argument (and they never, ever can), throw glitter at them.

The Strib editorial board sounds off against the fad - for all the wrong reasons.  It comes in the wake of some giggle moron throwing glitter at Mitt Romney during his stop in the Twin Cities earlier this week:

 That’s a mistake. Further glitterings, especially of presidential candidates, place everyone at campaign rallies at risk. Security officers must make instantaneous judgments about suspicious-looking people who get close to the candidates and their families. Whether it’s highly trained Secret Service officers or local law enforcement, it’s incredibly difficult in those split-seconds to distinguish someone drawing a weapon from someone pulling out a hidden bag of confetti.

According to the Strib, that’s the reason to stop the glitterings; the safety of the idiot throwing the glitter.

Thjey’re wrong, of course..  The risk to the over-schooled, under-educated, smug little glitter-throwing jagoffs isn’t the main reason to ditch the glitter.

The damage the practice does to our political discourse.  It’s long been a principle of free speech; your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins.  Maybe a couple of feet before, if you’re smart.  Throwing anything at another person is a form of assault; if you did it to a spouse or significant other in the wrong context (the middle of a fight) it could earn you a trip to jail.  As, indeed, it should have for the little prick that glittered Romney.

So what we have in Minnesota -and it seems to be a phenomenon among smug little Minnesota jag-bags, so far – is a group of people that thinks a form of assault, stylized as it is, is a legitimate form of protest.   Of “free speech”.

It makes Minnesota look like an invincibly stupid place.

As if electing Al Franken and Mark Dayton hadn’t done enough damage.

Sartre Had A Point

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When it comes to D-list political punditry, hell is other peoples’ predictions.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m someone else’s “other people”.  And my predictions have been…well, generally good.  I called the 2004 Prez and 2006 Governor’s races pretty much to the point.  I nailed the 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 8th CDs almost to the vote.  Yeah, I blew the 2006 Senate race by about ten, and there’ve been a few clinkers.  I also predicted Norm Coleman and Tom Emmer in squeakers over Senator Smalley and Governor Fauntelroy – and if you left out fraudulent  and multiple votes, I think I may still have been right.

Still, as much as I love doing predictions, there’s an intense Schadenfreud when other peoples’ predictions – especially journalistic A-listers – come a cropper.

And a cropper they came.

Funny stuff.

Shocked. Shocked.

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A program that has been taking from the middle class and giving to the rich…

Rising impatience in tax-rich Twin Cities suburbs over a regional program that takes millions from their budgets and awards it to less affluent communities will result this week in the most intense official scrutiny  the plan has ever received.

…for decades, incliuding a bunch of decades where the DFL and Strib-friendly “Moderate” Republicans controlled every facet of government…

A state report due out within days will examine whether the 40-year-old program known as “fiscal disparities,” which quietly shifts $500 million in tax base from one community to the next, is doing what it was designed to.

While some poor communities call the program a lifeline, critics say it artificially props up tiny towns such as Landfall in Washington County and pulls large sums out of increasingly distressed suburbs, while lavishing millions upon affluent communities at the urban fringe.

…as conservatives railed against it…

is finally getting a long, hard look by the Strib.

Now that the GOP runs things.

No, nothing untoward there.  Really.