Shot in the Dark

Month: September 2010

  • The Plan, Part I

    As this is written, Tom Emmer has just finished announcing Part One of his budget plan – the one that the DFL and the Chanting Class has been wondering about for the past two months. To paraphrase James Carville, Part One is about the jobs, stupid. Emmer is going to…: Lower The Corporate Income Tax.…

  • The Dayton Dust Bowl: Dust Bowl Day Marathon!

    Today is Labor Day – the day when Union members pat themselves on the back for another year of doing their jobs and getting paid for it, and when the rest of us hit the picnic grounds and ponder buying weatherstripping. And this year, the time when the political season starts to reach out to…

  • Chanting Points Memo: A Prediction

    Charting and predicting the continuum of DFL chanting points. Last Week: “Where is Emmer’s plan?” This Afternoon: “OK, where is the rest of Emmer’s plan?” A Few Weeks From Now: “Where is the last little bit of Emmer’s plan?” Novenber 3: “Where’s Mark Dayton?”

  • You Wanted A Plan? You Got A Plan.

    It’s been about two months since the DFL started chanting “Where’s Emmer’s Plan?” As I quite correctly pointed out in June, it’d have been stupid of Tom Emmer to release a plan at a point in the campaign when only wonks, journos and political junkies care about it.  The average, non-aligned voter doesn’t care about…

  • Underinsured

    They said (with a nod to Glenn Reynolds) that if we voted for John McCain, Americans would lose their health insurance coverage. And they were right! All but two health insurance companies have withdrawn from offering maternity benefits. Only a handful of companies will still write “child only” health insurance plans. As of this date,…

  • My Conversation With Every Single DFLer, Part II

    The conversation below is “Fake But Accurate”, and reflects things said – to me and otherwise – by DFLers in a variety of media over the past week or so.  I have synthethized those conversations into a single, “composite” character, whom I’ll nickname “EVERY DFLer” for clarity. Don’t try this if you’re not an English…

  • Chanting Points Memo: The DFL Morale Booster!

    The New York Times publishes a morale booster for the DFL, a week after the MPR/Humphrey Institute poll showed the Minnesota Gubernatorial race a dead heat. The analsysis – from “Five Thirty Eight”, a left-leaning statistics blog run amok (without mentioning anything about “Lies” and “Damned Lies”, for some reason) says Mark Dayton has a…

  • I Heard It On The NARN

    Yesterday during the final Northern Alliance broadcast from the MN State Fair, I referred you to a slew of websites: Phil Krinkie is with the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. Dan “Doc” Severson is running for Secretary of State Chris Barden is running for Attorney General Mark Martin is running for MN House in District 45A…

  • Stuck Among Stupid Insufficiently Curious

    Having the most interesting – read “depressing” – discussion with a couple of DFLers. Bobby Jindal is coming to the Twin Cities to raise money for Tim Pawlenty. Lefties:  “So was Bobby Jindal an “Anchor Baby?”  The GOP wants him sent home when they repeal the 14th Amendment!” Er, geniuses?  Jindal was born in Baton…

  • Fair Enough

    Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM, live (mostly) for our final day from the Minnesota State Fair! Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John are off on assignment  – so Kevin Ecker and Brad Carlson will be filling in from 11-1.  They’ll be doing their usual combination…

  • The Dayton Dust Bowl: When The Well Goes Dry

    The Minnesota Public Radio/Humphrey Institute “Poligraph”feature did provide some thorough fact checking on Dayton’s income tax proposals and found they came up short on revenue. The report called Dayton’s plan to raise $4 billion from raising taxes “wishful thinking”; the plan doesn’t account for the fact that people with money will likely change their behavior…

  • You Start Wearing Blue And Brown

    Mark Dayton demanded that GOP trackers start wearing uniforms. That’s not the kind of challenge you put in front of Derek “Chief” Brigham from Freedom Dogs. He’s got 12 potential designs.  My favorite: Check ’em all out here.  Details of the challenge here. It’s actually a contest put on by the MNGOP.  Contenders will be unveiled…

  • The Dayton Dust Bowl: Grossly Adjusted Waffles

    Dayton has changed the rhetoric on his tax plan and now claims the $130,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples was adjusted income, not gross income. I’m being charitable when I say “change”, by the way – on this blog, I busted Dayton a few weeks back, contradicting his own website, in a piece aptly…

  • If There’s One Thing…

    …you can count on in Minnesota politics, it’s that the Twin Cities media will keep an eagle eye on… …Republican candidates’ kids. Did Mark Dayton fall off the wagon in the past two years?  How severe are his alcoholism and depression?  How far down will Dayton have to push his definition of “the Rich” to…

  • It’s Official

    “Recovery Summer” is now turning into “Failure Fall“. By all means, Dems; raise taxes.  Turn the screws on all us working people just a little harder.

  • Here’s Another Prediction

    Florida will see the biggest slime-attack of its entire history… …against Jennifer Carroll. Carroll, a native of Trinidad, a retired Navy Lieutenant-Commander, a mother of three, an immigrant from Trinidad, and a conservative, is Rick Scott’s new running mate on the Florida GOP gubenatorial ticket. Oh, yeah; she’s of African descent: “Jennifer Carroll is the…

  • Not To Say…

    …that Michele Bachmann draws a crowd or anything, but this was the scene yesterday…: …at the Patriot booth when the Representative did an interview with Michael Medved. Yep – it’s cameraguys from all three of the local TV stations, pressed up against the glass. By the way – in case you missed it, I’ve upped my…

  • Headline Writers: Retire Now.

    Because the headline you’ve all been waiting all your careers to write has been written. It’s all over.

  • The Dayton Dust Bowl: Now We’re All Rich!

    If you are an above average nurse and police officer, or a couple of modestly-successful project managers, or an airline mechanic and a school teacher, or a business analyst and a modestly-successful sanitation equipment salesman, or whatever combination of hard-working Minnesotans you can imagine that are making a combined $150,000 a year, your taxes are…

  • The Dayton Dustbowl

    Almost eighty years ago, the Great Plains – where I was born, a generation later – were pummeled by back-to-back catastrophes.  The first one, the Great Depression, was manmade – a deflating credit bubble whose effects were exacerbated by government intervention in trade (the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which indirectly crippled farm exports) and the market (the…

  • How The Hell Does Emmer Win This Thing?

    Let’s make no mistake about this; I’m predicting Tom Emmer is going to win this fall’s gubernatorial race.  It’s going to be tight – 3-4 points, very likely less – but he’s going to win.   On the chance – heaven forefend – that he doesn’t?  In the wake of Jesse Ventura and Al Franken,…

  • Just So We’re Clear On This

    I do believe Mark Dayton taught high school. I believe it because it’d be grindingly stupid for a public figure to lie about something that is as relatively easy to run down (even given New York City’s sclerotic bureaucracy) as whether he actually taught. And even if Mark Dayton were unaware of how nothing remotely…

  • This Is Your Immigration Policy

    ¡Arizona es i occupado! The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state. But by all…

  • Miller’s Crossing

    Alaska’s GOP Senate nominee starts his quest to ask voters to “look into your heart”.  Senate Democrats may start asking contributors to look into their wallets. It had all the looks of an epic recount slugfest.  Narrow margin of victory.  A near blood fued between the waring factions.  Lawyers from Washington.  Instead, Alaska’s GOP primary…

  • Question For Teachers

    My impression is that having a license to teach in a state means one has…: taken (and presumably passed) the state-mandated series of education courses from an accredited college or university education program practice-taught a state-required amount of time with a regular teacher Applied for and gotten the license. What am I missing here?