Iowah-wah-wah

So no one knows who "won" the Iowa caucus, even this morning:

A technical meltdown in Iowa Monday night set off bedlam in the critical first contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, triggering competing claims of victory and stoking doubts about the legitimacy of the eventual outcome.

No results had been reported by midnight Eastern, and two campaigns told POLITICO that after a conference call with the Iowa Democratic Party, they didn’t expect any returns until Tuesday morning at the earliest.

Here's an on-the-spot report from Des Moines:

At this point, no one is going to believe the results, no matter what they are. All the Dems will claim victory and nothing at all will be decided. But remember, the Democrats are going to save the country from the Bad Orange Man.

My favorite quote so far? Probably this one:

Sanders' supporters were already crying foul. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who campaigned for Sanders in Iowa this weekend, tweeted, "Democracy dies in the darkness!”

If you're inclined, the entire Politico piece I've linked is a laff riot. One more fun observation contained therein:

If one thing was certain from Monday's debacle, Iowa had just signed its death warrant as the first-in-the-nation caucus state, the legendary Des Moines Register political reporter David Yepsen said.

“This fiasco means the end of the caucuses as a significant American political event. The rest of the country was already losing patience with Iowa anyway and this cooks Iowa's goose. Frankly, it should,” Yepsen said. “The real winner tonight was Donald Trump, who got to watch his opponents wallow in a mess. A lot of good Democratic candidates and people who fought their hearts out here for ... nothing.

“I expect Iowans will move themselves to kill it off by holding a primary, and let the state move to someplace behind New Hampshire along with other states.”

All those pork tenderloin sandwiches for nothing.

Random thoughts

• I don’t care that much about Ilhan Omar’s marital status per se, which has never been easy to sort out. What I do care about is it has been a marker for corruption, including the likelihood that she was a participant in, among other things, immigration fraud. And I especially care about the chance she has been paying her paramour a salary. That’s a big issue.
• Are the Packers for real? It’s always difficult to tell in the week-to-week world of the NFL, but for the moment the answer is yes. One thing is certain – Aaron Rodgers is not carrying the team on his back. If anything, he was along for the ride yesterday against Dallas. That’s by far the most promising development of the season thus far. Having said that, if Rodgers were to suffer a season-ending injury, it would be a disaster. Beating Dallas in Dallas is big, but beating Detroit in Green Bay next week is even more important, because it would establish clear supremacy within the division. Vic Ketchman, the retired Packers.com writer who is one of the best football minds around, thinks the Packers should be 11-2 when they hit the end of the season. If that happens, it could be a very special season. But then again, I’ve thought the Bears and the Vikings were actually the more dominant NFC North team at different points this season, only to see both of them underperform in key moments. This much seems to be true – while the Packers have not been dominant in any one game, they’ve done enough to win four games of five in the NFL, and have defeated three of the preseason favorites to be content for the NFC championship. That matters. Still, it’s best to trust no one.
• The local community newspaper chain that covers New Brighton and its neighbors has apparently gone out of business. In recent years, they haven’t done much other than print DFL politician press releases and semi-amusing police reports (no, seriously). Ad revenue hasn’t sustained their operations, and almost no one took a “voluntary” subscription to subsidize their efforts. It’s not surprising; many such small publishers have gone out of business in recent years, but it’s still a little sad. Almost no one covers the local scene any more and if any local government could use a little scrutiny, it’s New Brighton’s. I may have to step up my efforts on this beat.

The old-fashioned way

Some people decry Ilhan Omar because of her anti-Semitism. That's not what could bring her down, though. Simple, old-fashioned graft just might:

An independent government watchdog says Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's campaign may have committed serious campaign finance fraud.

Omar's campaign spent $21,547 on travel for the E Street Group, run by Tim Mynett, whose wife is now accusing him of leaving her for Omar. Tom Anderson, who is with the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, said the travel payment may actually be Omar using campaign funds for personal use, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

"We believe Representative Ilhan Omar may have touched the third rail of campaign finance law: disbursing campaign funds for personal use," Anderson said. "It's a brazen act Representative Omar was caught doing before in Minnesota and all of the evidence we've seen tells us she’s probably doing it again."

Omar has operated under the assumption that the Esme Murphys of the world will cover for her. If the "probably" turns into "is," she'll have to leave. There are dozens of the DFL politicos who would love to have her seat in Congress. We're watching this one.

Squad Goals

As I recall, #squadgoals was a popular hashtag around 2015 or thereabouts. The always useful Grammar Girl wrote about the term back then:

"Squad goals" can be simply the goals of your squad (your friends or your clique), but sometimes that seems to play out in practice as simply "awesome," as in "This is awesome," meaning "I or we want this someday," or "We want to be like this." So when you see just a picture of hot women with nothing but the comment "squad goals," it means something like "We want to be like them" or "We want to date them." 

It's good to have goals and it's useful to have a squad. But do you want the Squad? As we've learned in recent days, the four principal members of the Squad are Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley in the Zeppo role. Aside from Pressley, they've all taken star turns in 2019 and bedeviled Nancy Pelosi something fierce. And now Donald Trump has decided to bring them to center stage:

Impeach the MF-o, Al-Qaedo, Zeppo, Clapbacko

Trump went all Merle Haggard on these four, but he seemed to be training particular fire on our local hero, Omar, who walked right into the trap:

Al-Qaeda? Shmal-Qaeda! She won't dignify the question with a response, you see. I'm showing you this clip now because you might as well get used to seeing it; it should be part of just about every Republican ad you'll see in the next cycle.

Democrats want 2020 to be a referendum on Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants 2020 to be a referendum on the Squad and their supporters. Let's go back to Grammar Girl's definition:

"Squad goals" can be simply the goals of your squad (your friends or your clique), but sometimes that seems to play out in practice as simply "awesome," as in "This is awesome," meaning "I or we want this someday," or "We want to be like this."

Maybe the folks in Linden Hills find Ilhan Omar awesome and want to be like the Squad, at least as long as the Cedar-Riverside denizens don't take over all the tables at the Starbucks at 50th and France. But the eternal question remains -- does the Squad play in Peoria? Trump knows the answer. So does Nancy Pelosi, but because Trump will keep these four luminaries front and center, Pelosi has to defend them. And the folks in Peoria are paying attention, to say nothing of the folks in Grand Rapids, and Eau Claire, and Altoona, and even Duluth. Trump knows this, too. And Trump doesn't mind giving offense as long as he stays on offense.

Res ipsa loquitur, yet again

No point in sugarcoating:

It's always something

I think Ilhan Omar should just keep talking.

Received wisdom

So what causes a guy to shoot up a mosque? It's not a what, it's a who:

In his rambling, 70-page manifesto, the Australian white supremacist who massacred some 50 Muslims in New Zealand last week cited, as inspirations, British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, the People’s Republic of China, a videogame called Spyro the Dragon, fellow white supremacist terrorist Dylan Roof, and the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Bering Breivik. Conspicuous by her absence from this list was Chelsea Clinton.

Someone should tell New York University students Leen Dweik and Rose Asaf. “This, right here, is a result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” Dweik told the former First Daughter outside a memorial for the dead, in a video that instantly went viral. “Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.”

Right here in River City. Based on the available evidence, I'd always thought the next interesting thing Chelsea Clinton said would be the first interesting thing she said, but apparently I've not been paying enough attention. There's more:

For those of us who consider Chelsea Clinton a cringe-inducing banality, that she could be accused of anything so momentous, never mind a racist slaughter in the Antipodes, was puzzling indeed. And so it was with great curiosity that I read the Buzzfeed piece in which the pair explain their actions. In it, they accuse Clinton of having “stoked hatred against” all Muslims, everywhere, with a single tweet criticizing just a single one, Ilhan Omar. When the Democratic congresswoman complained about lawmakers being forced to pledge “allegiance to a foreign country,” she wasn’t repeating a hoary anti-Semitic trope which has instigated all manner of desecrations and violent attacks and pogroms. No, according to these NYU coeds, exemplars of American higher education as impressive as those Yale students who screamed at a distinguished professor for hours over Halloween costumes, Omar was “speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby in this country.”

It always comes back to Ilhan Omar. If you want to know who has real power, understand who cannot be criticized.

Control problems

Nancy Pelosi is finding out that the gavel is a poisoned chalice:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted Monday as saying she is not in favor of impeaching President Donald Trump, breaking from other Democrats who are eager to exercise their constitutional power to oust the president from office.

In an exclusive interview with the Washington Post’s Joe Heim, Pelosi said Trump is “just not worth it.”

“I’m not for impeachment,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said. “This is news. I’m going to give you some news right now because I haven’t said this to any press person before.”

Well, that's good to know. Do you think she's actually in control of her caucus, though? She just got rolled by the Big Three on the meaningless anti-hate resolution. She's not going to be able to move much of anything on her agenda, either. How's that working out for her?

Meanwhile, our neighbor Ilhan Omar is continuing to demonstrate her commitment to avoiding hate in her own inimitable style:

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., told Fox News on Monday that it was "silly" to compare President Trump with former President Barack Obama, adding: "One is human. The other is really not."

Dehumanize your opponents? That should satisfy everyone.

Laugh now, but. . .

Kurt Schlichter, discussing the antics of the Big Three (AOC, Omar, Tlaib) strikes again:

Not only does it rile up Nancy because these clumsy radicals have stolen the spotlight and made it immeasurably harder to pull off her “We’re sensible” scam on the swing seat suckers but it rankles because none of these debutantes have paid their dues. Nancy and the rest of her leadership worked for years and years accumulating power, rising through the ranks, and when they finally regained power suddenly these newbies who paid no dues but have a lot of Twitter followers showed up and took over the Democrat agenda. That’s got to be infuriating, and you can see it when Nancy talks about them – she can’t say it out loud, but you know what’s running through her mind is, “Who the hell do these upstarts think they are?”

Well Nancy, they seem to be your party’s future.

And if you doubt the heartburn it's causing the "sensible" types who got elected in the "Orange Man Bad" reaches of suburbia, consider Exhibit A, Dean Phillips, as reported in a perceptive profile from Politico Magazine:

Like many rookie lawmakers—at least, those of his moderate tribe—[Phillips] doesn’t want to rock the boat. Those Democrats who flipped red districts campaigned on promises not to clash emptily with Republicans; the irony, of course, is that they arrived in Washington only to realize that the g. reater threat to their jobs is coming from the left flank of their own party.

Phillips approaches the subject like he approaches every other political subject: gingerly. “It’s creating some interesting challenges in that some very young and new members have followings. Two people, their collective following exceeds the entire remainder of the Democratic caucus,” he says, deploying some digital hyperbole in referring to Omar and Ocasio-Cortez. “By definition, they become to the public the voice of a party, they become even de facto leaders of a party.”

As if this point isn’t explicit enough, Phillips adds, “This majority was achieved not by winning in AOC’s district or Ilhan Omar’s district, [but] by victories in districts that had not been terribly favorable to Democrats in the past. … So if there’s a tension in the party, it’s how do you maintain that majority?”

Let's assume, for sake of argument, that Phillips is sincere. In that case, he really should have primaried Erik Paulsen. But that wouldn't have worked, so instead he boarded the crazy train. I have no sympathy for Phillips at all; he should be made to defend his colleague Omar at every turn, or, if he really has the courage of his convictions, he should start denouncing her. But he won't. Dean Phillips wanted to be a Congresscritter in the worst way, and now he has his wish.

Back to Schlichter (emphasis in original):

The moderate Dems will have to turn on the radicals or get turned out. It already happened once as a couple dozen Dems joined Republicans to add an amendment to a gun grab bill that mandated reporting illegal aliens to ICE if they tried to buy a firearm. Ocasio-Cortez and her group opposed it. In fact, the Lil’ Kommissar even threatened to put these rebels on a list to be terminated (via primary now) for daring to *squints real hard* want to report to immigration authorities any illegal aliens trying to illegally buy guns.

Do it, AOC. DO IT! 

Nothing like intra-pinko cannibalism. Turn the Democrat Party into the Donner Party. While you consume each other, I’ll be here gobbling cruelty-free, carbon neutral popcorn.

But, of course, there is always a chance that things don’t go the way we hope, and that there are enough historically ignorant suckers in the big blue cities to allow these freaks to take over the levers of power. Sure, the Democrats’ pain is hilarious, but the fact that a major political party has surrendered itself to the zealots of an ideology that has murdered 100 million people is not so hilarious. Maybe if the socialists get in charge here, they won’t bring misery and murder. Maybe the ones in Congress now are so smart and competent that they can actually make this blood-splattered ideology work. But it’s going to be a hard sell for the Dems to get us to bet our lives on it.

It's not funny at all.

Just run, then

I'd be hard pressed to think of a more irritating local politician than Ron Latz, who buys his sanctimony by the 55-gallon drum, but even he would be an improvement over Ilhan Omar:

As Ilhan Omar’s political star was rising last year on her way to becoming one of the first Muslim women in Congress, several Minnesota Jewish leaders invited her to talk privately about past statements they considered anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Gathering at a state senator’s home, they hoped to get a better sense of her views while expressing their concerns.

Most came away dissatisfied by what they heard.

Those concerns were confirmed this week when Omar suggested on Twitter that members of Congress support Israel for money, igniting a bipartisan uproar in Washington that included criticism from President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“There seems to be a pattern developing which indicates more of an attitude than mistakes,” said Ron Latz, the Democratic state senator who hosted the meeting. “And that’s what’s most troubling. I mean, I’m grateful that she seems to be willing to be engaged in conversations with the Jewish community, but she doesn’t seem to be learning from those conversations.”

Latz is correct about almost nothing, but he's accurate about Omar. So Latz ought to primary Omar. So should half the ambitious DFL pols in CD-5. Start cleaning up the mess.

Doc Zero reminds us where we are

Via Ace, what should be obvious:

I don't understand how anyone who claims to be conservative needed to hear Democrats openly endorse infanticide in order to realize Dems are extremists on abortion and no one with respect for life can vote for them in good conscience.

This stuff about making the infant comfortable while you decide whether or not to kill her isn't a bolt from the blue. It's not a shocking aberration. It's the logical conclusion of Democrat abortion politics. It's not that much different than stuff Obama said about abortion.

It should have been obvious as all hell to any reasonably engaged conservative -- and most definitely to all professional pundits -- that Democrats are all-in on late-term and born-alive abortion. 

Once you accept the premise that someone else's life is expendable, any endpoint is arbitrary. Ralph Northam may get drummed out of the governor's chair in Virginia because he did some blackface 35 years ago, but the issue with him isn't his early adult deportment, but rather the disregard for others that he evinces with his statements on infanticide. There's more, though:

Passive conservatives long ago proved they don't understand GOP voters. This infanticide shock shows they don't understand Democrats either. They don't appreciate the value of what they throw away when they toss Dems electoral victory to score points in GOP power plays. 

Democrats are not your friends, kids. They hate you. Erik Paulsen thought he could keep his distance from people he found distasteful and that his political opponents would give him credit for goodwill. Instead, he got his butt handed to him.

You don't have to like Trump. Really, you don't. But understand this -- if you're a Republican politician or pundit, you'll get nothing for your virtue signaling. You will not be treated better in captivity. The Ralph Northams and Ilhan Omars of the world don't give a damn about your bien pensant posturing. They may or may not make you comfortable, but in the end they will decide and the decision will not be in your favor.

The obligatory recap

So what happened yesterday? A few thoughts:

• I was surprised Jeff Johnson won, but in retrospect I should have seen his victory over Tim Pawlenty coming a mile away. Johnson was the GOP nominee in 2014, so he's hardly a newcomer. Pawlenty had a lot of money behind him, but little rationale behind his campaign. In important respects, the dynamic was the same as what happened to Tommy Thompson when he lost to Tammy Baldwin in the senate race in Wisconsin in 2012; the brand name is rarely enough and the politician with the name still has to make the sale. The business about Pawlenty's dissing of Trump was a factor, but Pawlenty's evident disdain in dealing with the state party (he blew off the nominating process and the convention) was far more important. Johnson has been campaigning hard all year. The party activists were out in force and they voted for Johnson. Other than an ad attacking Johnson, Pawlenty was barely visible. Pawlenty thought he was invincible. Guess not.
• On the DFL side, Tim Walz will be hard to beat. He has a dozen years of experience pretending to be a moderate and he'll tack to the center now that he has the DFL nomination, but operationally he's no different than Erin Murphy. Johnson's task will be to demonstrate that Walz is a phony. As for Lori Swanson, good riddance. We can also hope that Mike Hatch, the éminence grise behind Swanson, is finally gone as well.
• I wonder how Alliance for a Better Minnesota is going to play things now. They were clearly planning to carpet-bomb T-Paw, but he's gone. Let's see what the big brains do.
• Keith Ellison is a dumpster fire, but he won the Attorney General's race easily. Can he make the sale statewide? I suspect Doug Wardlow, the GOP nominee, will get some help. Ellison is a deeply corrupt individual and the notion that he should be attorney general is preposterous, but those three letters after his name carry a lot of weight.
• Ilhan Omar is a fraud, too, but she's almost certainly going to Congress. The good news is she'll be a nonentity backbencher. Betty McCollum will save a seat for her.

Game on!

Back from SLU

We are back from our visit to St. Louis. Since we're catching up, let's drop a few bullets:

• Saint Louis University (SLU) has a lot of resources, including an endowment of over a billion dollars. That gives SLU a competitive advantage over many of its usual competitors. Money in and of itself doesn't guarantee successful outcomes for students, but it makes a big difference in things like physical plant and opportunities for overseas programs. 
• The city of St. Louis has a lot of issues, but the campus area is pretty nice. It sits a few miles to the west of the downtown area and immediately to the west of the SLU campus is the Central West End neighborhood, which reminded Mrs. D and I of the nicer sections of Chicago. Forest Park, a mile to the west of SLU, is a magnificent urban park that's more like Central Park in New York than anything here, although Como Park in St. Paul has some similarities. It looks like a good place to spend four years.
• Turning to politics, I have a question -- if you commit a crime in this country, are convicted, and are sentenced to prison, what happens to your children? Depending on your circumstances, a lot of things could happen. Your kids may end up living with your spouse, grandparents, other family. They could end up in foster care. One thing is certain -- they will be separated from you. Is that cruel? Sure, but it's one of many reasons you shouldn't get sent to prison. What's happening at the border now means parents are getting separated from their children. That's cruel, too. But it's also predictable. If anyone you know is shrieking "this is not what we are" on social media, they're not telling you the truth, or they're dumb.
• It sure seems like people in the DFL are in a hurry to send Ilhan Omar to Congress to replace Keith Ellison, Wonder why.
• We saw Incredibles 2 yesterday. I recommend it. It's not as flat-out brilliant as the original movie, but it's full of fun and it has some interesting things to say about our current world, especially social media. But to say too much would lead to spoilers, so I won't do that. Worth your time, for sure.

Calliope, Part Three -- Minnesota CD5

When incumbent Keith Ellison jumped into the race for attorney general, that meant there would be a free-for-all for his seat in Congress. In my mind, this race becomes the most interesting race of this cycle, because it will tell us a lot about where the metro DFL really is these days.

If the DFL is still sane, Margaret Anderson Kelliher will be the obvious choice. The former speaker of the Minnesota House and 2010 endorsed DFL candidate for governor, Kelliher is a reliable liberal but. . . how do I put this? She's a recognizable political type, the earnest liberal who is willing to talk with conservatives. She would represent CD5 much in the way Ellison's predecessor, Martin Olav Sabo, once did. Kelliher is about the best one could expect out of the district. But she has plenty of competitors. Patricia Torres Ray has been in the state Senate for a dozen years now and hasn't done a lot to make a difference there, but she'd not embarrass anyone. Then there are two candidates who represent the two sides of Ellison. Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant with an, ahem, interesting past,  was just elected to the House in the last cycle. She seems to have a lot of push behind her candidacy, as she carries Gov. Mark Dayton's endorsement. Then there's state Senator Bobby Joe Champion, an Ellison protege with a trail of ethics investigations in his past, along with two other minor candidates. On the Republican side, there are candidates, including the endorsed candidate Jennifer Zielinski, but Republicans aren't going to win CD5.

So what happens? The motivated group wins. Kelliher would be the smart choice for the district and for Minnesota, but I would not be surprised if Omar wins. Advantage -- Margaret Anderson Kelliher.