If you missed the MOB Winter Party last Saturday night at Ol’ Mexico, I feel sorry for ya. 

We drew about 80 people, which is up there with the totals we drew at the legendary MOB parties three and four years ago.  It didn’t seem as crowded; we had the party room at Ol’ Mex to ourselves, which left a little more elbow room that Keegans’ serpentine main room (although I’m thinking having the Summer Party at Keegans’, with cigar patio back in commission, sounds just fine to me).

As to who showed?  Well, pretty much the usual who’s who of Twin Cities blogging: Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas (along with Mrs. Elder and the three Mini-Elders), King Banaian from SCSU Scholars, Ed Morrissey (who came bearing, um, Canadian cigars – thanks, Ed!), our NARN producers Tommy and Jon, Doug Bass, John “Policy Guy” LaPlante, the Night Writer, Reverend Mother and Tiger Lily, Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, David Strom and Margaret Martin, Nachmann from Loyal Opposition, Jessica from the late Pianomomsicle, Katie Kieffer from KatieKieffer.com, Swiftee from the late Restraining Order, Toni Backdahl from the MN Tea Party, Derek Brigham and “Lassie” and Guy Collins from Freedom Dogs, Robin from A Girl’s Gotta Vent, Sheila Kihne and Laura Hemler and their husbands, Jamie Delton (Legislative candidate in St. Paul as well as proprietor of Delton Digest), Teresa Collett (candidate for the Fourth District Congressional seat), Mr. and Mrs. D from Mister Dilettante, Andy Aplikowski from Residual Forces…

…and I’m not gonna pretend I can remember too many more!  But there was a first; we had a table of five people show up who’d heard about the party at the “Kill the Bill” rally at the Capitol earlier in the day.  They knew nothing about blogs, but figured it’d be a fun party to crash.  Thanks!

If you wrote about the party, leave a link in the comment section!

Anyway – stay tuned for the MOB Summer Party, coming up right around State Fair time.

Bike out:  Check.

Tires topped up:  Check.

Bag/Backpack for hauling my crap to work:  D’oh.

Last minute trip to WalMart?  Check.

Mission clock is at T minus thirty minutes.

Al Franken is at -6 on the “passion index”, according to Rasmussen via the Strib:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Minnesota finds that 50 percent of voters in the state approve of the job Senator Al Franken is doing, including 25 percent who strongly approve. That’s unchanged from surveys in November and January. On the other side of the ledger, 46 percent disapprove, 31 percent strongly.

The reason, of course, is yet more proof of Berg’s Seventh Law; while the Dems routinely tell the world that John Kline, Michele Bachmann and Erik Paulsen went to Washington to promote an “extremist” partisan agenda, Al Franken – “progressive” author and failed “Air America” host – actually did get elected after running a campaign based purely and expressly on being an obstreporous, Kos-friendly extremist.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen found that 67 percent approve of how Senator Amy Klobuchar is performing, with 42 percent who approve strongly. The overall approval rating is a nine-point increase from November. Just 30 percent disapprove of Klobuchar, including 15 percent who strongly disapprove.

A-Klo, on the other hand, realizes the great political truth; that once you’re a Senator, politics is mostly about not losing.  Playing it safe.  Not making the dumb mistakes. Barring the uncontrollable (like Norm Coleman running against a media shooting star in a bad year for Republicans – twice!), being an empty skirt is a recipe for a long career in Washington.

I saw this news last week…:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

…and thought “oh, great”.

Not that I don’t think some balance is in order.  After having kids and stepkids in one school or another for the past twenty years, there’s no question that the public education system is biased to the left, especially in whatever pass for “humanities” in the public schools.  History education in particular is a joke; I’ve spoken, exasperated, about this in the past; my kids have gone years where all they studies were slavery and civil rights.  Important, sure.  Episodes with big impact on many of the kids’ lives?  Absolutely.  The only things, practically, worth studying?  Hardly.

And on the occasions where other parts of history and current events were studied?  Yeah, pretty much “America last”; the few kids who are even exposed to the ideas of “liberalism” and “conservatism” seem, for some reason completely unknown to me – to come out of school with the idea that “conservatism is about the right to own slaves and the freedom to let old people freeze”.  Nothing new there.

So the idea of “balance” seems, on the surface, to be an improvement.

The problem is, I don’t want either side – any side, really – writing the history books “favorably” to themselves.  I’m not one of those people who ever thought teaching kids the dates and places and events was such a bad thing; tell kids what happened, and show them what other commentators – not textbook writers – have written about the events, and let them make up their own minds.

“But Mitch!  Kids are stupid! They don’t have what it takes to process all that information!”  So do you think they’re processing the pre-digested stuff that’s slanted one way or the other?  Hell, most history teachers haven’t processed most of what history actually means.

The big question with this Texas fracas is “how good an idea is it for committees of politicians, most of them pretty ignorant themselves, to be determining what goes into textbooks and curricula?”

Meanwhile back in my hometown of Jamestown, ND, they’re getting ready for more flooding, as the two reservoirs north of town fill to records.

Now, Jamestown is built at the confluence of the James River – the world’s longest non-commercially-navigable river – and Pipestem Creek.  Both rivers drain a huge basin in central North Dakota (and South Dakota as well) into the Missouri River.  Given their huge watershed, both rivers are fairly sensitive to fluctuations in water supply; in the eighties, during a very dry period, the James barely flowed.  On other other hand, before the James was dammed up in the ’50s, a wet season could leave Jamestown half-submerged. (The Pipestem also flooded, in 1969, leading to another dam in the seventies).  So in theory, Jamestown should be flood-proof – unless it’s been a very wet winter and both reservoirs are nearly full.

Suffice to say it’s been a very wet winter:

Jamestown and Stutsman County should prepare for the same combined releases as they did during the 2009 floods, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, which changed its forecast for the James River and Pipestem Creek Friday.

The corps’ had originally estimated releases of 1,800 cubic feet per second. The new forecast recommends building emergency levees to handle combined releases of 3,200 cfs from Jamestown and Pipestem reser-voirs — the same level the two dams released at the peaks of the 2009 flood.

1,800 to 3,200 cubic feet per second.  Bear in mind the usual combined release from both dams is about 30 cfs.

According to the corps, the 0.5 to 1.5 inches of precipitation received in the James River Basin this week changed the situation and now reservoir pool levels could exceed 1997 levels, according to the “most likely” forecasts. The upper range of forecasts indicate reservoir pool levels could reach the same levels as in 2009, said Col. Robert J. Ruch, Omaha district commander for the corps.

It’s going to be another flood-prone year throughout the upper Midwest.

“The wars of the future may be fought on the internet” – Johnny Roosh

As a boy growing up in the Soviet Union, Sergey Brin witnessed the consequences of censorship. Now the Google Inc. co-founder is drawing on that experience in shaping the company’s showdown with the Chinese government.

The internet may be many things, for better or worse, but one would have to backtrack history to the invention of the printing press to find an innovation that has done more for the free flow of information, expression and commerce.

China will never threaten America’s dominance unless and until its people enjoy the same freedoms of speech and enterprise that Americans do.

Meanwhile, back at the Neanderthal Ranch…

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for regulation of the Internet on Saturday while demanding authorities crack down on a critical news Web site that he accused of spreading false information.

…because after all Chavez is an expert on falsities.

What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books. ~Sigmund Freud, 1933

…SITD wasn’t the first to take notice, but we smelled this a mile away.

A federal safety investigation of the Toyota Prius that was involved in a dramatic incident on a California highway last week found a particular pattern of wear on the car’s brakes that raises questions about the driver’s version of the event, three people familiar with the investigation said.

On Monday James Sikes, 61 years old, called 911 and told the operator his blue 2008 Toyota Prius had sped up to more than 90 miles per hour on its own on Interstate 8 near San Diego. He eventually brought the vehicle to a stop after a California Highway patrolman pulled alongside Mr. Sikes and offered help.

During and after the incident, Mr. Sikes said he was using heavy pressure on his brake pedal at high speeds.

But the investigation of the vehicle, carried out jointly by safety officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Toyota engineers, didn’t find signs the brakes had been applied at full force at high speeds over a sustained period of time, the three people familiar with the investigation said.

Multiple sites (ex. Fox News, courtesy Bill C.) are reporting Mr. Sikes is in financial trouble and my have simply been looking to get out of his obligations on the Toyota Prius.

Today on the show, I’ll spend a chunk of the first hour talking about the GOP gubernatorial race.

I’ll be heavily referencing two excellent blog posts from this past week, both of which appeared in True North: “Why I’m Supporting Tom Emmer” by Craig “Captain Fishsticks” Westover, and “A Closer Look At Voting Records” by regular SITD commenter Master of None.

Tune in after 1PM, on the air at AM1280 or online at the Patriot’s web site!

Tea Party?  Coffee Party?  Pfft.  It’s time for the granddaddy of them all, the original Minnesota beer party!

Don’t forget tonight’s the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers’ Winter Party.  We’ll be at Ol’ Mexico in Roseville from 7 until we’re done.

Ol’ Mex is on Lexington just a block or so north of Larpenteur in Roseville.

You don’t have to be conservative (the MOB is non-partisan) or even care about politics (not all MOB blogs are political, and it’s almost but not quite bad form to talk politics there).  You just have to love hanging out with fun people, with good food and drinks, and lots of stuff to talk about.

Hope to see y’all there!

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” -  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.  Highlight of the day?  Karl Rove will be on!
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is going to be at the “Kill Bill” Rally at the Capitol, but he’ll be racing back for Hour 2.  I’ll be talking with Randy Gilbert, State Auditor candidate, and discussing the MN governor’s race – and that’s before Ed even gets there!.
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!

(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).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

(SCENE:  At the Oceanaire – a tony seafood restaurant in Downtown Minneapolis.   Representative Paul Thissen, Senator Tom “Baby Got” Bakk and Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson-Kelliher are sitting at a table with five empty chairs.  Anderson-Kelliher, bored, drums her fingers on the table.  Thissen checks his watch, and Bakk rock nervously in their seats. )

(Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak enters the room)

THISSEN, BAKK and ANDERSON-KELLIHER, SIMULTANEOUSLY:  Hello, Mayor Rybak.

RYBAK:  Hey, Margaret!

(BAKK and THISSEN, deflated, go back to gnawing on toothpicks)

RYBAK:  Thanks for calling the meeting, Margaret.  What’s up?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  I’d like to lay out some ground rules and strategy for the campaign.

(SEN. MARK DAYTON walks into restaurant).

RYBAK: That’s a great idea.  (Notices DAYTON).  Hey, Mark!

DAYTON:  Aaaaaaagh!   (DAYTON dives to floor, rapidly low-crawls to the table, furtively sits in chair).

THISSEN:  What’s the matter, Mark?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER - Shut up, er…

THISSEN: Paul…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: …whatever.  (Turns to DAYTON)  What’s the matter, Mark?

DAYTON:  (Affixing a lobster bib) Er, nothing.  Why?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Just curious.  (Looks at menu, as former Senator MATT ENTENZA, with wife LOIS QUAM, enter the restaurant.

BAKK: “Hey, Matt…”

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  I said SHUT UP!

BAKK: You told Paul to shut…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Don’t care!  (turns to ENTENZA) How are you today, Matt?

ENTENZA: I’m doing…

QUAM: (A little too effusive) He’s doing just fine, Margaret!  (ENTENZA abruptly stops).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: Ah, excellent!

(A loud belch issues from outside the entrance.  Rep. TOM RUKAVINA walks in, pounding his chest.  He shakes out another mild belch). 

THISSEN:  Hey, Tom…(Trails off as ANDERSON-KELLIHER stares him down; THISSEN looks bash fully at his menu).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Excellent!  I believe that’s everyone…(counts noses)…except…

(Harps play in the hallway.  A little dry ice fog obscures the floor.  Sen. JOHN MARTY, hands clasped as if in prayer before him, moves across the floor as if floating, and lands like a hummingbird on the remaining chair.  A golden aura briefly suffuses the room, then vanishes).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Hey, John.

MARTY:  May the blessing of my presence bring you peace.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: Er, yeah.  I called you all here today because voters are having a hard time telling the difference between us.  For the good of the DFL race, it’d be best if we all come up with some sort of differentiation between us before the convention.

RYBAK:  Primary.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Convention!

ENTENZA: Yeah, convention!.

QUAM:  Primary!

ENTENZA: Er, yeah.  Primary.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Convention!

THISSEN:  Convention, just like Margaret says…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  For the last time, shut the **** up!  (ANDERSON-KELLIHER flings a salt-shaker at THISSEN, hitting him in the face.  He falls backward over his chair, and lies on the floor, motionless.  DAYTON dives for the ground).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Like I said, convention.  So I’d like you all to think of things we can do to distinguish ourselves to the voters…

WAITRESS (Approaches with order pad in hand):  Hello, my name is Wendy, and I’ll be your…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  For the last ****** time, shut the **** up…

RYBAK: Er, Margaret?  She’s the waitress…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Oh.  Go ahead, then.

WAITRESS:  Er, OK.  Any drink orders before we order dinner?”

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Boilermaker.

RYBAK: Appletini, please.  Extra tini.

BAKK:  I’ll have whatever Margaret is having.

THISSEN:  (Groans incomprehensibly)

RUKAVINA: Grain Belt Premium! 

ENTENZA:  I’ll take your house chablis…

QUAM:  He’ll take the house merlot, and so will I.

ENTENZA:  Er…yeah.

DAYTON:  A diet Pellegrini.

WAITRESS:  Sir, all Pelligrini is “Diet”.  It’s water…

DAYTON:  Two diet pellegrinis.

MARTY:  I shall have a glass of water.  But please bring it in gaseous form.

WAITRESS: Er…wait – you want a cup of steam?

MARTY:  As it is said, so shall it be poured.

WAITRESS:  Er, OK.  And would you all like to start a tab?

(All at table break up into uproarious laughter)

RUKAVINA:  Baby, you ain’t seen nothing.

(WAITRESS LEAVES)

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: OK.  I’d like everyone to say, for the record, what makes you different.  Paul?

THISSEN:  (Groans, puts hand on forehead).

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: OK.  Matt?

ENTENZA:  (Looks at QUAM)

QUAM:  He will raise taxes for a better Minnesota.

(ENTENZA nods enthusiastically).

RYBAK:  Well, I’ll raise taxes for a better Minnsesota, too.

BAKK:   Well, I won’t…

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: Yes, you will.

BAKK:  Yes, I will.

DAYTON:  I will raise taxes.  For a better Minnesota.  (Eyes door furtively).  I will.  I will.  I will.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  OK.  Not getting what I want here…

RUKAVINA:  I’ll raise taxes more for a better Minnesota!

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Better…

WAITRESS (Carrying tray of drinks):  OK, that’s two house Merlots,  a Grain Belt Premium, two Boilermakers, an Appletini, two “diet Pellegrinis” a cup of steam, and (looks at THISSEN) some smelling salts.

THISSEN:  (grunts painfullly)

WAITRESS:  That’ll be $77. 

ANDERSON-KELLIHER: No.

WAITRESS:  Er, maam?  I brought the drinks.  You need to pay up.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Shut up.

WAITRESS:  Maam?  This isn’t funny.  You wanna leave me on the look for almost $80 worth of drinks?

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  Shut up!

RUKAVINA:  Yeah.  Shut up!

WAITRESS:  I’m gonna call the police.

ANDERSON-KELLIHER:  (Stands at table)  Attention, everyone in the restaurant.  Please pay our drink tab!  It is for a better Minnesota!

(RUKAVINA, BAKK, RYBAK, QUAM, and ENTENZA applaud; DAYTON balances spoon on his finger; THISSEN groans)

MARTY:  As it is written, so shall it be done.  (MARTY disappears in a blinding flash of pure light).

And…scene.

I’m not sure what’s dumber; that besieged Danish “Mohammed” cartoonist Lars Vilks told a Swedish newspaper how he planned on dealing with killers who – according to some reports – American “Jihad Jane” was recruiting to try to assassinate him…:

The latest threat to Lars Vilks emerged yesterday when seven people were arrested in Ireland accused of plotting to kill the 63-year-old artist.

Mr Vilks responded by saying that he was ready for them. “If something happens, I know exactly what to do,” he said.

His home in southern Sweden now contains a barbed-wire sculpture that could electrocute potential intruders, a secure space to hide in and an axe which will allow him “to chop down” anyone breaking in through his windows.

…or that the press printed it.

Dear terrorist/stalkers/burglars; no boobytraps in my house.  Pinky swear.

The problem with gun control – one of the reasons that it’s finally stiffing with the American people – is that it burdens the law-abiding citizen for the crimes of society’s low-lifes.  It’s one of the reasons America is rejecting gun control; Real Americans can’t abiding punishing those who’ve done no wrong.

Hopefully that same impulse will swallow up this moronic idea:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill are proposing a new national biometric ID card that would be required of all U.S. workers. WSJ’s Laura Meckler explains the proposal and the objections from privacy advocates.Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

In other words, force each individual American to validate him/herself, rather than deal with the real problems – open borders, and a socialist neighbor whose economy resembles what ours will

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/588e8cae-2d48-11df9c5b-00144feabdc0.html

Yet again, a cure that’s much worse than the disease.

Thriving businesses ship things.

They’re not:

The nascent US recovery could falter because businesses are still reluctant to invest in new equipment and technology, the head of global delivery and logistics company FedEx has warned.

“Business investment went up somewhat in the fourth quarter but is far below what it ought to be in a cyclical recovery like this,” Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive of FedEx, told the Financial Times.

FedEx has a decent record of predicting these things.  Which is the bad news.

Back when I wrote my “Secession Diaries” piece a few years ago, I joked about the militarization of the Federal bureaucracy:

The Prime Minister 1092 approved, presented the plan to Parliament, and within the month announced a plan to increase the Peace Force, and other military forces controlled by the Minister of Peace, to 150,000 men and women. Their weaponry was to be augented with stocks of former US Army weapons – tanks, artillery, etc – taken from depots around the USoC.

However, the powerful labor bloc in the Ministry of Labor worried about the concentration of so much power in the hands of the Ministry of Peace. They rammed through a measure allowing Labor to recruit and, if needed, draft 80,000 armed Labor Enforcement Police.

Suspicious of Labor and Peace, the Transport Ministry snuck in a measure allowing it to recruit or draft 75,000 National Highway Patrol, including a squadron of F-16 Tactical Traffic Control fighters.

Not wanting to be left out, the Ministry of Justice created a force of 45,000 Field Marshals. To prevent violence and terrorism in schools, the Ministry of Education was authorized to recruit/draft and train 50,000 Tactical School Patrols. The Customs Department followed suit with 35,000 Customs Patrol Inspectors, the National Endowment for the Humanities with 20,000 Special Museum Guards, the Ministry of Safety added 40,000 armed Emergency Workers, the Ministry of Housing with 20,000 Tactical Housing Inspectors, and even the Ministry of Sensitivity, which brought on 10,000 plainclothes Sensitivity Detectives.

Now, I thought I was exaggerating; I mean, the phenomenon swerved into the ridiculous during the Clinton years, but hyperbole is hyperbole.

Well, no. Hyperbole is reality.  The Department of Education is taking bids on some new equipment:

U.S. Department of Education (ED) intends to purchase twenty-seven (27) REMINGTON BRAND MODEL 870 POLICE 12/14P MOD GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 GAUGE: 12 BARREL: 14″ – PARKERIZED CHOKE: MODIFIED SIGHTS: GHOST RING REAR WILSON COMBAT; FRONT – XS CONTOUR BEAD SIGHT STOCK: KNOXX REDUCE RECOIL ADJUSTABLE STOCK FORE-END: SPEEDFEED SPORT-SOLID – 14″ are designated as the only shotguns authorized for ED based on compatibility with ED existing shotgun inventory, certified armor and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.

The required date of delivery is March 22, 2010.

Interested sources must submit detailed technical capabilities and any other information that demonstrates their ability to meet the requirements above, no later than March 12, 2010 at 12 PM, E.S.T. Any quotes must be submitted electronically to the attention of Holly.Le@ed.gov, Contract Specialist (Contract Operations Group), with a concurrent copy to xxxxxxx.xxxxx@xx.gov, Contracting Officer (Contract Operations Group)

So why does the DoE need riot guns?

Jokes about unruly kids are noted in advance.

To: Kevin Spacey

From: Mitch Berg, Fan

Re: Career Opportunities

Dear Mr. Spacey,

It’s been a long time since you lit up the small screen with your performance as Mel Profitt on Wise Guy (perhaps the most unjustly-obscure great TV show of all time).  Verbal Kint?  Even American Beauty?  Seems like forever.

So I know you’ve been working hard to get back out of the dinner theater circuit.  So no doubt your agent told you this would be a great idea.

Perhaps you need to shoot for The Usual Suspects II: Weekend At Keyser’s.

Just saying.

That is all.

Bill Sparkman was murdered by anti-government zealots spurred to a homicidal rage by Michele Bachmann and the Northern Alliance.  Er, wait.  Nope.  My bad.

Then the guy who crashed a plane into the IRS office in Texas was a tea-bagging mouth-breathing conservative.  Oops.

Then the guy who shot the Pentagon cops ended up being a Glenn-Beck-listening dittohead.  D’oh. This isn’t going well at all.

OK  – any guesses how this “story” turns out?

A woman talking on a cell phone during a movie didn’t take kindly to being “shushed” by another moviegoer. Or at least her boyfriend didn’t.

In a drama that turned more lively than the one on screen — “Shutter Island” — the boyfriend allegedly attacked and stabbed the “shusher” in the neck with a meat thermometer. Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said the stabbing occured Saturday during a screening of the Martin Scorsese film.

Remember – if we ban kitchen accessories, only criminals will have them:

The victim was attacked by the woman’s boyfriend and another man. Deputies say he was stabbed in the neck with a meat thermometer.

Anyone checked Kos lately?

Remember 2008, 2006, and 1996?  When conservatives, disaffected by the GOP and the people who’d represented it in Washington, stayed home in droves?

Sorry, Dems; it swings both ways:

Is President Obama losing his base?

Liberal and progressive organizations that helped propel him to the White House are turning on him now, little more than a year after he took office. Their collective discontent, on issues from health care to nuclear energy to the handling of terrorism suspects, could mean bad news for Democrats during this fall’s congressional elections.

One wonders if anyone’s regretting rejecting Hillary?

Polls show that liberals and blacks still approve of the job Obama’s doing. That approval, however, doesn’t necessarily mean they will make the effort to vote, and many of the activists and groups that worked to get people to the polls in 2008 say they’re not inclined right now to help Democrats in the fall.

Now, I”m not going to get too excited about the polls; the base will most likely rally around their guy, at least partially.

But if the base ain’t buying it – and not turning out 100% – what will the undecideds and “independents” do?

As we noted earlier, the unintended consequences of a new Obama administration regulation will be worse than the “crisis” it was intended to solve:

Several airlines, including Fort Worth-based American and Houston-based Continental, say they will cancel flights rather than risk paying stiff penalties for delaying passengers on the runway…Under new federal guidelines that take effect next month, airlines can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger if a plane is stuck on the tarmac for longer than three hours.

With the new fines, a delayed MD-80 could cost American Airlines close to $4 million, and a fine for a full 757 could cost more than $5 million.

So to avoid the huge hit – which doesn’t discriminate between reasons for plans taking off late – airlines will cancel flights that show even the slightest chance of getting delayed on the ground:

“It’s unavoidable that more flights will be canceled to avoid fines,” said American Airlines spokesman Steve Schlachter. “It’s one of the unintended consequences of a bill that has no flexibility.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Transportation Department said airlines can avoid fines by doing a better job of scheduling flights and crews.

“Carriers have it within their power to schedule their flights more realistically, to have spare aircraft and crews available to avoid cancellations” and to rebook passengers when there are cancellations, said Bill Mosley, a department spokesman.

Which is something that could only come from a government bureaucrat (or a libertal tax hike advocate).  Weather and its affect on other airports is the main reason for delays; flights are scheduled months in advance (or so Orbitz tells me; check it yourself).  And at a time when competition, regulation, taxes and fuel costs are already trimming airline margins to the bone, “spare planes and crews” are things that only government can realistically afford.  And remember – today, as we noted in my previous post on the subject one flight in 10,000 is currently more than three hours late in taking off.  Many times more than that will be cancelled, now.

The DFL is heading toward a convention that will bestow its usual “kiss of death” to whomever gets it – usually the candidate that makes the “progressive” activists that control the party the most tingly; this will lead to a summer of hammer-and-tong DFL fratricide leading up to a September primary that will determine the real candidate for governor. 

This combined with the fact that the DFL is in a historically disorganized state, and heading into a headwind of disaffection with Barack Obama and a GOP with new leadership at its head and a Tea Party chasing it to relevance, and the DFL and its minions are desperately in need of a sideshow to draw attention away from their own cage match.

Dave Mindeman at mnpAct wants to direct the reader to the sideshow they’re counting on  – the neck-and-neck GOP endorsement battle between Marty Seifert and Tom Emmer:

The Emmer vs. Seifert free for all on the GOP side of the governor’s race is heating up. Both sides are capable of some prolific attack dog politics. And it will get nasty.

It is gradually developing into a conservative base vs. party establishment fight. Emmer is increasingly drawing endorsements and support from conservative bloggers, conservative activists, and conservative leadership. Seifert has support from old line party leadership and the more traditional Republican base.

Which is an interesting way for the local leftysphere to put it, given that both Emmer and Seifert are routinely portrayed as “conservative extremists” whenever they’re mentioned in any other context.  But it’s not untrue; Seifert’s got the organizational mojo, Emmer’s a conservative firebrand and the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today.

The two have developed a recent history. Emmer had challenged Seifert for Minority Leader a few years back and then refused to vote for him for Speaker in 2009. Emmer has been waiting awhile for this opportunity and he is cashing in.

Add to all of this the fact that delegate strength to the convention is nearly evenly divided and you have the makings of an old style, no holds barred, nasty party convention.

Yep.  The GOP convention is going to be a donnybrook, very possibly crazier than the 2002 convo. 

It is noteworthy that Seifert has been particularly critical of Emmer’s voting record of late. The in-depth research style has the definite ring of a Brodkorb type tactic. Although the former MDE attack blogger has been careful to be neutral in his capacity as party deputy chair, his fingerprints are almost detectable in the current Seifert strategy.

It’s no big secret; Seifert’s the “insider”.   The party has several years invested in Seifert as minority leader.  

But this – and the idea that for every yin there needs to be an opposite yang – leads Mindeman to a fatally flawed assumption or, if you are more cynical, to the gaping whopper the DFL wants you all to believe about the MNGOP in the upcoming election; the sideshow, if you will, to try to distract the voters and encourage the DFL troops as they go through their own cage match this summer.

He starts out OK…:

Looking over the general Republican landscape, let me make a speculation…and mind you this is only an opinion.

The conservatives are putting a vested interest in Emmer. He is emerging as their consensus choice. Emmer has a wind at his back as he makes his case for the convention.

Yep.  The GOP’s conservatives are using the endorsement process as it was intended to be used; as the time to reject compromise, to declare “death or glory”, to come home with their shields or on them; to campaign for the most conservative candidate left in the race.  They don’t want the consolation prize; they want it all.  And correctly so; now is the time to fight like hell for the brass ring. 

Seifert’s supporters, by the way, are doing exactly the same thing.  Because now is the time for the fight.

But it’s on May 2 that Mindeman’s theory goes to pot. 

If Seifert manages to wrest the nomination away from Emmer in a bloody convention, you will see a party that will go into the fall campaign divided. A conservative backlash might just stop the conservatives from coalescing around Seifert, reducing his turn out and possibly moving toward some other third party or maybe even forming one.

Let me take you back in time to 2002.  Brian Sullivan – who was and is every bit as conservative as Tom Emmer – had the backing of the conservative base.  Tim Pawlenty – who held the same position in the GOP caucus that Seifert does today – and Sullivan were every bit as closely locked together as Seifert and Emmer are today.   And some of the punditry, especially on the left, predicted exactly the same result; that Sullivan’s supporters would stay home, that conservatives would break away, that the GOP would battle itself into irrelevance.

But the convention, as long and brutal as it got, had exactly the opposite effect.  To win the endorsement, Tim Pawlenty had to adopt one of Sullivan’s key driving points – the Taxpayers League’s “No New Taxes” pledge.  And for the imponderably vast majority of Minnesota conservatives, that was more than enough. 

Tim Pawlenty took the pledge – and, more importantly, has honored it for eight years, now.  And I, as a fire-breathing conservative talk show host, could care less if he took a trip to the arctic with Will Steger that had absolutely no policy ramifications, as long as he stuck to the point that mattered – stymying the DFL’s plan, ”spend like crack whores with stolen gold cards”.

In short, the bruising endorsement process had exactly the effect it was supposed to; a candidate won, but as a result of his fight to get endorsed, he took the keystone of his challenger’s platform to the Governor’s Mansion with him.

Emmer may have a better chance of holding the party together but he is going to carry some baggage as well.

Nope.

Look – I’m not backing any particular candidate, at least not publicly.  Not yet.  But I’ll tell you this; even if you are a stone-cold Tom Emmer zealot, you have to realize that not only would Marty Seifert be a better governor than any of the DFL’s pack of hamsters, but that Marty Seifert’s voting record in the House is more conservative than Tim Pawlenty’s ever was.   Seifert is a conservative.  As conservative as Emmer?  Perhaps not – but plenty good enough.

So campaign like hell for whomver your candidate is – Seifert or Emmer.  Because for once,  conservatives are in a win-win situation.   Whomever gets the nomination will be a better, more conservative governor than any of the alternatives available to us today.  Neither will be perfect – but perfect, as they say, is the enemy of “plenty good enough”.

There will be blood.

No.  There will be coffee, and shouting, and more coffee, and pictures of delegates sleeping at 2AM with drool coming out of the corner of their mouth, and more coffee, and Excedrin, and five or ten or fifty ballots, and concession and acceptance speeches, and handshakes, and meetings, and buried hatchets and smoothed feathers, and looks out the window at the Tea Partiers who are done asking nicely for results.

And on the morning after the final gavel, there will be a campaign that hits the road at the head of a mostly-unified GOP that has a three month headstart building a winning campaign, on its way toward capping off an epic comeback.

There will be coffee, drool and victory.

Three words to live by.

“Show me the cases of ACORN being convicted of fraud!”, the lefty demands upon any criticism of the “community organizing” group.

It’d help if the charges were actually investigated:

Milwaukee police officers sat on their hands for months last year instead of investigating possible voter fraud cases from the 2008 general election.

Must be just some hate-clogged “teabagger”, right?

It’s an incredible claim, but it’s coming from a credible source:

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, the Milwaukee County prosecutor responsible for overseeing campaign and election issues.

“Honestly, the Milwaukee Police Department largely ignored your double voter (and other) referrals received in January 2009 for the first six months of 2009,” Landgraf wrote in an e-mail to a city elections official on Jan. 26.

So ACORN is “innocent”.

In their defense, they’re out on the golf course looking for the real frauds.

…probably fifty years before CGI, when people actually had to do the impossible:

That’s The Ross Sisters, from 1944.  And it’s 90% amazing (especially the shot starting around 2:45), 10% kinda creepy.

(From my high school classmate Dena’s Facebook page)

Gotta say one thing about the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers; there’s no shortage of economists.

Phil Miller writes Market Power, an excellent, consistent, fairly prolific blog that covers family life, Missouri sports and, yes, copious economics.

And his timing is perfect.  I was just floundering through writing a post about  Joe Conason’s idiotic Salon column saying the Tea Parties would leave the US open to catastrophes like Haiti’s response to their earthquake.

Miller, naturally, does it better:

3.  On the one hand we have Haiti, an impoverished country hit by a magnitude 7 earthquake.  The result was hundreds of thousands dead and terrible damage.  On the other hand we have Chile, hit by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake, much, much worse than the quake that hit Haiti in terms of sheer seismic power (the Richter scale is based upon the base-10 logarithmic scale).  Like the Haitian quake, this one was centered near a major city and it caused considerable damage.  Unlike the Haitian quake, it also generated a tsunami that inundated coastal regions of Chile.  It was a double whammy for Chile.  But the death toll was much smaller than in Haiti (just over 700 dead from what I last saw).

Why the difference in death tolls?  One argument can be made that Chile’s building codes were stricter than Haiti’s.  That is true.  But you also have to point to Chile having enough wealth and income to be able to afford having stronger building codes.  You have to be able to take care of the basics – basic food and shelter – first before you take care of the fancy stuff – fancy food and shelter.  Where does wealth and income come from?  Generally speaking, from strong market institutions (HT Art Carden).  Why does Chile have stronger market institutions than Haiti?  Bret Stephens points to Milton Friedman.

Ironically, Friedman’s Nobel Prize ceremony was punctuated with protests for his having been associated with the Chilean dictatorship.

Phil Miller’s Market Power; all the Missouri, none of the Keynesianism.

Speaking of schools – the head of the Detroit Public School board, which graduates less than a third of its students, albeit at exquisite expense – writes like an illiterate:

The school board is led by Otis Mathis, who wrote a mass email last August:

Do DPS control the Foundation or outside group? If an outside group control the foundation, then what is DPS Board row with selection of is director? Our we mixing DPS and None DPS row’s, and who is the watch dog?

And here’s the beginning of an email to supporters a few days ago that started with this:

If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, move Mark Twain to Boynton which have three times the number seats then students and was one of the reason’s he gave for closing school to many empty seats.

Remember when MN2020’s John Fitzgerald said that the big advantage public systems had over charter schools was that you could elect the school board?

Some punch lines write themselves.

Mark Krikorian at NRO-Online is un-thrilled by the census’ intrusivness, too:

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year’s form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government’s business (despite the New York Times‘ assurances to the contrary on today’s editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks “What is Person 1’s race?” (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don’t do it.

I think I’ve done that.  I also registered for Obama’s “Organizing for America” email blasts as “Beinrich Bimmler” (20 extra points for those who get the reference).

Krikorian actually has a better idea:

Instead, we should answer Question 9 by checking the last option — “Some other race” — and writing in “American.” It’s a truthful answer but at the same time is a way for ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes. In fact, “American” was the plurality ancestry selection for respondents to the 2000 census in four states and several hundred counties.

So remember: Question 9 — “Some other race” — “American”. Pass it on.

I’ll plan on it.