Radio D

I assume that many of you are already regular listeners to my friend Brad Carlson's radio show, "The Closer," which airs on Sundays from 1-3 p.m. on the Patriot. If you aren't, you really should be.

Brad has been nice enough to let me invade his studio tomorrow to help him out. We'll be discussing a number of topics, including recent political events and a preview of the upcoming NFL season, from a NFC North perspective. Tune in to AM1280 if you're in the Twin Cities or you can listen here. I'll do my best to maintain a minimum level of coherence.

Aunt Judy

My Aunt Judy passed away last night. I was fortunate to see her, for what turned out to be the last time, a week ago at our family reunion back in Wisconsin. She'd been through a lot of health problems in recent years, but her mind was sharp until the very end.

She was the younger sister (and sometime tormentor) of my father when they were growing up in Kimberly, Wisconsin. It's a role younger sisters play and she was good at it. Aunt Judy was good at most anything she set her mind to doing. She was smart, resourceful, generous and always patient. She was a schoolteacher, a farmer's wife and the mother of five talented children, who have all done very well in life.

She and my Uncle Frank took me and my brothers into their home when we were young, at a time when my mother was struggling with illness. These events happened over 40 years ago, in the spring of 1969, when we were too young to understand what was happening. I was five years old at the time and I remember romping around the farm with my cousins. My brothers and my cousins, for reasons that are clear only to five-year-old boys, started calling ourselves the "Generosity Boys." We didn't exactly know what it meant, I think, and only later did I understand the amount of generosity we were experiencing at the time. I also remember Aunt Judy taking the time to explain why Walter Cronkite was telling me that President Eisenhower had died, and why that mattered. She could be a teacher any time it was necessary. It wasn't the last time Aunt Judy helped me understand why something mattered, either.

When things were tough, her advice was that we should "storm the gates of Heaven" with prayer. Now she's on her way to the gates of Heaven and I suspect she's arriving with plenty of momentum. My thoughts are with my Uncle Frank and my cousins -- Dan, Steve, Lois, Gerry and Sarah. They have a journey to complete as well, but I know they'll manage it with grace. Aunt Judy taught them well.

And now for something completely different

Back in my college days I used to write poetry. I hadn't really tried to sit down to write a poem in nearly 25 years, but lately I've been trying to exhume the muse. A lot has gone on in the last month and as I tried to sort it out in my mind last night, a poem struggled to emerge. I present it here, with the hope that Blogger doesn't completely mess with the intended formatting. I hope you enjoy it. If this doesn't work for you, remember that we often have a more prolific poet in the house:

August 16

It began with a month of windshields and detailed observation of cornfields in various states of distress,

 indicating less than one would hope in

    the 102 miles between suburban St. Paul and Danbury, a town you pass through on the way

       to your initial destination

First, the joy of the children as they complete their disco Jesus hymn singing among the tamaracks

   in the small church by Webb Lake, with the meander of the county highway that leads to towns you’d barely noticed

   as the time approaches to retrieve your son some 52 miles away, who is clean and reverent despite the condition of his overnight bag, containing a merit badge for camping and a dozen tales of derring-do

You’ve marked these paths before – Augusts in ten-year increments have

  brought you back to your ancestral home to eat fried fish and digest mortality –

Dad clenching his hands in literal death grip on the hospital bed some 22 years before, not ready

 Mom fading a decade later, the cancer removed but with less than a week to enjoy the cure

  August arrives in warmth and often leaves with a hint of chill, a cold taste that you’ve sensed every time a telephone rings, because the voice on the other end of the line is hushed, again, beneath the              

    plangent tone

  The morning paper reports a missing girl, 3, has drowned in a canal in Danbury, the town you passed through just weeks before without a second thought, her tale complete before it begins

We’ve said goodbye before in August

The phone rings during your 3 p.m. meeting to discuss alternative website presentation of portable generators

   and when the number comes up on the screen, it’s your sister and you fear another goodbye is

    Imminent

The meeting ends and you duck into an empty cubicle to return the call – a massive cerebral

   hemorrhage has struck and felled your Aunt, nearing 80, though she’s kept alive long enough

     so her family can assemble and say goodbye, her tale complete

Tears flow in Danbury and St. Anna, two Wisconsin towns six hours apart, for lives separated by 347 miles

         and three quarters of a century

   We say goodbye in August, sensing the chill

Bye, Tony

If you've ever spent time around GOP events in Ramsey County, chances are you've seen Tony Bennett. He has always made the point of claiming to be a Republican, but during his tenure on the Ramsey County Board, he's always been happy to spend more money. He recently got his moment in the spotlight as the primary face of the effort to bring the Vikings to Arden Hills.

On Tuesday, he got his reward:

Ramsey County Commissioner Tony Bennett lost his bid for re-election to the County Board in Tuesday's primary election, after serving 16 years in office.

Bennett faced three challengers in the nonpartisan election, and he came in third by a narrow margin. The top two vote-getters, Blake Huffman and Frank Mabley, advance to the November general election. The fourth candidate, former Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, came in last.

Bennett understood what happened to him, but his explanation shows he lacks understanding in other ways:

Bennett was a champion of the failed effort to locate the new Minnesota Vikings stadium in Arden Hills. He said that may have factored into his loss.

"When you've been involved as much as I've been, as long as I've been, sometimes you do things that some people don't like," Bennett said. "It wasn't the stadium that was the issue, it was cleaning up a property that needed to be cleaned up, it was putting some people back to work. The stadium just happened to be the vehicle we used."

This is nonsense. The stadium was the issue. Bennett saw it as a capstone of his long career. And as it turns out, it is the capstone -- just not the way Bennett thought it would be.

Huffman will do a better job of protecting the interests of his constituents than Bennett has. If he gets Sue Jeffers as a colleague, things will change for the better on the County Board.

Dullard with Sharp Elbows

I'll say this much for Joe Biden -- at least he didn't plagiarize this bit from Neil Kinnock:

"Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing," Biden said of the Republicans at a campaign stop in Danville, Va. "Romney wants to let the — he said in the first 100 days he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules."

Then it happened. Biden began waving his right hand, palm up, and he adopted what he must have thought was the accent of a black minister.

"Unchain Wall Street," said Preacher Joe, reaching to the heavens, "They're going to put y'all back in chains."

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune asks a salient question:

Is that how people in Delaware talk? Or is it how white Democratic politicians speak when they're using dialect to talk down to black voters? What's next, Preacher Joe? Spirituals? Or are you going to carry around copies of "A Raisin in the Sun" and "To Kill a Mockingbird"?

It's a fair question. I don't know what Delawareans sound like. I'd be willing to wager they don't sound much like Amos and Andy under normal circumstances, but one never knows.

As I've written about the increasing string of nastiness that has emanated from Team Obama, I suspect that I've confused a few of my regular readers. At least one, Ace Commenter Rich, seems to think that I'm outraged by the behavior of Team Obama. He offered the following observation a while back:

You all seem upset that Obama forgot to act like Michael Dukakis or John Kerry. Or maybe it's that you guys are stuck with the horrible candidate from Massachusettes this time. Better get used to it. Obama, and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi all have some pretty sharp elbows. Thank God!

Actually, that's not it. I'm not upset; actually I'm amused by the way Team Obama is flailing around these days. I suppose Harry Reid deserves credit for at least knowing not to use bad dialect.

Biden understands that he needs to be an attack dog, but he's not very good at it. No reason to be outraged about it. The proper response is to laugh at people who are laughable. At this point Biden is pretty much a combination of Spiro Agnew and Pete Puma.

And the best part? Obama is stuck with him. Who would want to replace Biden on the ticket right now? Hillary Clinton? Not likely. Back to Kass:

Should Hillary Clinton come to Obama's rescue? Why should she? When she and Obama faced off for the 2008 presidential nomination, Clinton and her husband, the former president, had the race card played against them by Team Obama. Bill had dared to suggest that Obama's Democratic primary victory in South Carolina was similar to past victories there by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. For daring to state the obvious, the Clintons were savaged. Bill Clinton said it was Obama's campaign that injected the race issue.

"I think that they played the race card on me," a still furious Clinton said in a radio interview after the campaign was over. "And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along. I was stating a fact, and it's still a fact.

For all his vulgarity and faux-preacher dialect and smarmy pol tricks in Virginia, Biden showed the American people what they can expect from the Obama campaign in the months ahead. And he distilled the Obama re-election effort down to its basic elements:

Class war and race.

That's all they have. They certainly aren't going to run on their economic record. Maybe they can trot out the dog strapped to the car story again or something. As a certain radio guy in town likes to say, I always love that one. So here's my advice -- follow the wisdom of Elvis Costello. Don't be disgusted. Be amused.

On to the general

Primary results are in for both Minnesota and Wisconsin and now we can move forward to the general. A few observations on last night's results:

• The most consequential result was Tommy Thompson holding off three other competitors for the Republican slot in the United States Senate race in Wisconsin. Thompson essentially dominated Wisconsin politics during the 1990s and will now face Tammy Baldwin for the seat. I'm of two minds about this development. While there's no question that Thompson is a competent politician and a proven vote-getter, he is 70 years old and has been in the game since 1966. He will likely be the favorite against Baldwin, who is about as pure a Madison liberal as one might imagine. The always astute First Ringer has some thoughts about this race over at Shot in the Dark and I commend them to you.
• Speaking of old dudes getting back in the game, Rick Nolan has emerged as the DFL candidate who will take on Chip Cravaack for the 8th CD in Minnesota. Nolan served in Congress in the 1970s but has been out of Washington for over 30 years. Nolan is a contemporary of Jim Oberstar, who represented the 8th for what seemed like a thousand years (actually 36). Nolan used to represent a rural district in southern Minnesota, but is now trying to claim the Iron Range. We'll see how he does against Cravaack, who won big in the exurban areas of the district in the last election. I think Nolan's last GOP opponent was Wendell Willkie.
• Since Nolan has advanced, that means that Tarryl Clark is out. Clark, as you might recall, ran against Michele Bachmann last time around and decided that she needed to find a constituency that would send her to Washington, so she moved to Duluth to run in the primary. Clark blew through a lot of Emily's List money and her failed campaign has given Cravaack some good ammunition to use against Nolan. At some point GOP Chair Pat Shortridge really ought to send Taxin' Tarryl some sort of lovely parting gift, since few Minnesota politicians have provided more direct benefit to the GOP than the hapless Clark. Now that Clark has been rejected by two different congressional districts, it will be interesting to see what she does next. My guess is that she can park herself at the Humphrey Institute and hang out with her male equivalent, Steve Kelley.

Primary Day

A reminder that you should go to the polls today, whether you live in Minnesota or Wisconsin, as it is primary election day. This blog is based in northwest Ramsey County, Minnesota, and for residents of this area the most consequential matter on the ballot today is choosing which two candidates go forward to the general election for the Ramsey County Commission.

If you want to see actual reform, Sue Jeffers is the obvious choice. Sue has been a prominent voice in Minnesota politics for the better part of a decade, both as a primary challenger to Tim Pawlenty and as a successful talk show host. She is fearless, smart and would help to transform the logrolling culture that has long been in play at the county level. Ramsey County collects a lot of tax money and they like to dole it out to politically connected people, particularly to the commissioners themselves. It's a nice deal if you can vote yourself a 25% raise, as the commissioners did in 2007. Sue will put a stop to this sort of thing.

Her two opponents are Mary Jo McGuire, who lost the musical chairs game in legislative redistricting and wants a new sinecure; and Mary Burg, who just wants a sinecure. Both would be willing to keep things status quo. When the status quo stinks, that's not acceptable. Sue Jeffers is the obvious choice.

Over in Wisconsin, there are four Republican candidates who are vying for the ballot spot for United States Senate. It's an open seat in Wisconsin, as longtime nonentity Herb Kohl is stepping down after 24 utterly undistinguished years. The challengers include Tommy Thompson, who once dominated Wisconsin politics as a popular governor; Mark Neumann, a former Congressman; Eric Hovde, a successful businessman who is attempting to emulate the success of Ron Johnson; and Jeff Fitzgerald, currently the speaker of the Wisconsin assembly. Thompson is probably a slight favorite, but it's possible any of the four could emerge. All are certainly preferable to the Democrat in the race, Cong. Tammy Baldwin, who is the Madison candidate from Central Casting when it comes to politics. I've been in Wisconsin a fair amount in recent weeks and the campaign among the four Republican contenders has been a little edgy, if less so than what folks there have recently had to endure. Under normal circumstances, Thompson would have had little trouble with his opponents, but we are not living in normal circumstances these days.

Get out and vote today.

Shut Up and Get in Line

I've been a bad, bad boy:

So what about Republicans and other Romney supporters who don’t think much of the pick?  What should they do?

How about this: Shut up.

No criticism you mount now can change anything, and you simply are piling on not just to bury Ryan but to bury Romney.

These are not policy positions where there is a gradation.  It’s all or nothing on the Ryan pick.

Your either are with Ryan or against him.  And if you’re against him publicly, then you’re with Obama.

Free will is overrated, I guess.

More Thoughts on Paul Ryan

Having had a day to think about it, I'm still not sure I'm sold on the idea of Paul Ryan as the ideal running mate for Mitt Romney. I think Ryan is great, but I suspect having him in the VP slot will be more beneficial for campaigning than it would be for actual governance, should Romney win the election.

Ryan is very well situated in his position as chairman of the House Budget Committee. He's really set the policy and intellectual tone for the Republican Party for the last three years. If Ryan goes to live in the Naval Observatory, the new chairman of the House Budget Committee would likely be Scott Garrett, a congressman from New Jersey. Garrett is about as reliable a conservative as a New Jersey congressman could be, but he's not exactly a high-profile fellow. I think Ryan's leadership would be missed.

Every president swears that they will find a substantive role for their vice president, but veeps usually end up getting sidelined. Dick Cheney was an éminence grise for George W. Bush, but Joe Biden has been more typical -- a guy who goes to funerals and serves as a punchline for Jay Leno jokes. In this model, the buffoonish Joe Biden is perfect -- Biden has been a combination of Spiro Agnew and Shecky Greene. It would be a shame if Ryan found himself in that position. It will be important to pin down specifically how Romney would deploy Ryan.

Paul Ryan

Is Mitt Romney's running mate. Guess I'd better opine:

• He was probably my second choice; on balance I'd have preferred Bobby Jindal, who brings executive experience. Ryan brings something else, which is intellectual candlepower. He's one of the smartest dudes in Washington.
• Obama and his campaign will now go on full bore Mediscare and heartless bastard mode, but they were going to do so anyway. Better to have the architect of the House Budget plan explain it himself.
• Joe Biden will have a very different experience in the vice presidential debate this time.

The Onion Previews the October Surprise

The Onion is often hit-or-miss these days, but this is perfect:

With campaign rhetoric becoming increasingly heated and both presidential nominees releasing more attack ads, a new 30-second spot from the Obama campaign this week accuses his opponent Mitt Romney of committing the 1996 murder of 6-year-old beauty pageant queen JonBenét Ramsey.

Titled “He Did It,” the advertisement asks if anyone can truly remember where Romney was the night of the child’s murder, and whether the U.S. populace wants a president capable of strangling a little girl and dumping her body in her parents’ basement.

President Obama appears at the end of the advertisement to approve the message.

“I think this is a fair ad, and I think Mitt Romney owes an explanation to the American people as to why he murdered JonBenét Ramsey,” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, who called the commercial’s black-and-white reenactment of Mitt Romney carrying a kicking and screaming child to her death “accurate.” “Ultimately, voters need to know who they’re getting with Mitt Romney: a job- and child-killing businessman who is so deceitful he won’t release his tax returns or admit to a senseless murder that shook the nation to its core.”

Romney better come clean on the Lindbergh baby, too.

The latest from Team Obama

They say this Mitt is a bad mother--

The Story So Far: two days ago, the Obama administration – using the fig-leaf/cutout of Super PAC Priorities USA – accused Mitt Romney of being a murderer because a company that Romney used to own closed down a steel mill (several years after Romney left that company) and that meant that the wife of the husband who lost his job at that steel mill (one Joe Soptic) didn’t have any insurance after the wife left her job several years after the layoff and several years after all of that the wife was diagnosed with cancer and then died. 

Emphasis in original. This is an interesting theory and potentially good news. You see, I have a former employer who closed its operations in Minnesota a number of years ago, which caused me to lose my health insurance. My wife had insurance available from her employer, though. We all seem to be in good health lately, but if that changes I'm pretty sure I can find some way to blame Mitt Romney for it and the Obama campaign would probably put me on television, too.

The funny part is when the Obama campaign denies knowing anything about the falsity of the ads its sock puppets are running, even Politico is calling them out on it:

When President Obama’s aides said they weren’t familiar with former Missouri steelworker Joe Soptic’s life story, all they had to do was check their own campaign archives.

Soptic, laid off from Bain Capital-owned GST Steel, stars in a Priorities USA Action spot this week in which he tells of how his wife died without health insurance after he lost his job. Soptic also appeared, wearing what appears to be an identical shirt, in a May television ad for the Obama campaign.

Asked about the Priorities spot on MSNBC Wednesday morning, Robert Gibbs said he doesn’t “know the specifics” while Stephanie Cutter said on CNN: “I don’t know the facts about when Mr. Soptic’s wife got sick or the facts about his health insurance.”

How would they know? Well,

And Jen Psaki told reporters on Air Force One that “we don't' have any knowledge of the story of the family,” according to Yahoo! News.

But Cutter hosted an Obama campaign conference call in May in which Soptic told reporters the very story featured in the Priorities spot.

"We" don't know anything about the manure we package up and put on the airwaves. No, we're a bunch of Sergeant Schultzes around here.

This sort of thing is not new, of course. Remember this charming message from the 2010 Minnesota gubernatorial campaign?

Mitt Romney gives people cancer. Tom Emmer causes drunk driving. My goodness, the Republicans are a bunch of rat bastards.

So what do we conclude from this? Two things, I think. First, the Obama campaign is a lot more desperate than they care to admit. And more importantly, if you ever hear someone complaining about Willie Horton or "Swiftboating" again, feel free to laugh in their face.

Point of exhaustion

It's been a very busy few weeks and I don't have much to offer today. But I'd suggest you read this piece from the always-reliable Chad the Elder over at Fraters Libertas.

Another DFL Careerist

One of the hallmarks of the collection of DFL politicians in my area is careerism. Yesterday we discussed the career paths of two DFL candidates running for the Ramsey County Board. Today, let's look at another one, Connie Bernardy, who would like to get back in the game as the new representative for District 41A.

Bernardy served the better part of three terms in the legislature representing the old District 51B. She claims that she chose not to run in 2006 to spend more time with her family. It's tough to be spending a lot of time in St. Paul, I suppose, but she hardly left the game, since she resigned before her term was complete and immediately took a job elsewhere. The job? A lobbyist for Education Minnesota. The state lobbyist records indicate this as well.

This is a predictable pattern in St. Paul. Legislators leave and cash in as lobbyists, then try to come back. The question is whether such patterns are desirable, especially where Education Minnesota is concerned. Bernardy's opponent, Dale Helm, would argue otherwise. From his website:

There are two competing models for education in our state - one is "pro-union" the other is "pro-people". The union model supports a more bureaucratic and centralized form of control for our schools.

In my opinion this model is dangerous because it restricts the voice of parent, teacher, and school board from having a more direct impact on the education of our children. Also, if you do not like a policy or program you are far less able to create change. Remember, you can't elect or vote out a bureaucrat.

My opponent supports this model - and has been a fulltime lobbyist for the Education Union to promote and expand this model even further. This is why she resigned in her third term - to become a fulltime lobbyist for Education Minnesota.

Helm is correct that there is a disconnect between the particulars of Bernardy's career and what she claims on her website about her history:

Connie entered into the public arena in 1999, when she saw the funding crisis that was threatening the schools her daughters attended in the area. With a non-partisan group of parents, administrators, teachers and others, she founded S.O.S. (Save Our Schools). S.O.S worked successfully to restore funding to our schools.

A funding crisis means different things to different people, but for Education Minnesota the crisis is (a) only related to compensation for its membership and (b) eternal. It's worth asking if sending Connie Bernardy back to St. Paul will help education generally, or simply give more power to Education Minnesota.

Sue vs. the DFL Careerists

I've been doing a lot of traveling over the last few weeks and it's been difficult to keep focused on the local elections, but we are now only a week away from the primary elections in Minnesota and there are specific races where a vote matters. One of the more important ones the race for the District 2 seat Jan Parker is vacating on the Ramsey County Board.

There are three candidates in the race and only two will move forward to the general election. One of the candidates is strongly preferable to the other two. Sue Jeffers first made a name for herself in politics when she chose to primary Tim Pawlenty. In essence, she was a Tea Party candidate five years before there was a Tea Party. She's a successful businesswoman and has been a strong voice for the taxpayer. She's also one of the most tough-minded people I've ever known -- an indomitable spirit and a ceaseless advocate for keeping the long reach of government out of people's wallets and lives.

There's no question that Jeffers would shake up the self-dealing honey pot that is the Ramsey County Board. She'll look at every dime that the board bids fair to spend and will challenge the logrolling culture that has developed there. It's illustrative that the most "conservative" member of the county board is District 1's Tony Bennett, last seen trying to spend a billion dollars to build Zygi Wilf a stadium in Arden Hills.

Sue's two opponents are both careerist politicians of different sorts. Mary Jo McGuire lost the game of musical chairs for her state senate seat and is looking at the Ramsey County board as a nice, soft landing spot. Although she's well known in St. Paul, she's not especially well known in District 2, since she has generally represented areas to the south of the district. From what I can tell, McGuire's only guiding principle is that she should be in political office, spending other people's money because she knows better.

Also in the race is Mary Burg, who is currently a member of the New Brighton City Council. Burg has been part of the taxing and spending faction there for her entire career and is looking at the job as an opportunity to spend a different revenue stream. Since the New Brighton City Council is officially nonpartisan, Burg isn't really identified as a DFLer, but one look at her record indicates that she fits the model well.

Jeffers would change the culture at the board, while either McGuire or Burg would simply continue the pattern that Jan Parker has established -- spend the money and try to stay out of the headlines. We need reformers and you won't find a better reformer than Sue Jeffers.

Gino lays it out

Let's begin at the end, with Gino's conclusion:

What passes for marriage anymore is a far cry from the institution my grandparents took part in. There really is nothing Holy about government sanctioned matrimony anymore, so lets stop pretending there is.

Same Sex Marriage will always be a contradiction. That said, government by nature is corrupt and run by whores... renaming something to it's liking doesn't make it so anymore more than calling a cat a dog will.

My guess is that Same Sex Marriage will be the law of the land a lot sooner than anybody thinks. I don't mind.

How he gets there is what makes clicking the link well worth your time. Read the whole thing, but consider these insights:

I'm willing to bet that it would difficult to find anybody among the Chick-Fil-A-tionists of the past week who would be OK with the public hanging of Gays.

Yet, at the same time, it's easy to see why a segment of the population would be just a tad peeved with some of the bully tactics employed by the Gay Marriage supporters...

This peevedness goes beyond a few big city mayors, and extends to the past several years of antics the Gay side has been guilty of.

From Judges redefining the English language in California, despite the will of the voters to decide the meanings of the words they use...

To death threats delivered to openly anti-Gay Marriage churches.

Yes, death threats... from the liberal progressive tolerance crowd who oppose hate.

People flocked to Chick-Fil-A as a way of saying 'We are tired of your shit already!', not because [of] hatred.

Not everybody who opposes Gay marriage is acting out of hate, just like not all Gay marriage supporters endorse acts of terrorism. I think sensible folks can at least agree this much.

You'd like to think so.

You Didn't Build That. . .

But you did finance it:

As the Obama administration moved last year to bail out Solyndra, the embattled flagship of the president’s initiative to promote alternative energy, a White House budget analyst calculated that millions of taxpayer dollars might be saved by cutting the government’s losses, shuttering the company immediately and selling its assets, according to a congressional investigation.

Even so, senior officials in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget did not discourage the Energy Department from proceeding with its plan to restructure a federal loan to Solyndra — a move that put private investors ahead of taxpayers for repayment if the company closed, the investigation by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee found.

The restructuring went forward, but within months Solyndra failed anyway, leaving federal taxpayers on the hook for much of the half-billion-dollar federal loan. Now, a year after the company’s collapse, debate continues over whether the refinancing plan was legal or a wise investment. Last week, Solyndra’s final liquidation plan estimated that the government will recover just $24 million of the $527 million that taxpayers lent to the company.

In an article full of tidbits, here's the most interesting one:

The House energy committee is expected to release the results of its 18-month investigation into Solyndra this week. Its report, parts of which were obtained by The Washington Post, suggests that then-OMB Director Jack Lew let the refinancing move forward without intervening, even though some OMB analysts thought a refinancing plan that favored private investors might violate the law. Lew is now White House chief of staff.

Emphasis mine. Makes sense. Competence like that ought to be rewarded in BizzaroObamaWorld.

One question: so who were the "private investors" who got in front of the line in the bankruptcy? Here's a hint:

Two of Solyndra’s largest investors are Argonaut Ventures I, L.L.C. and the GKFF Investment Company, LLC. Both firms are represented on the Solyndra board of directors by Steven R. Mitchell (see Solyndra S-1 page 119). Both are investment vehicles of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

And why would George Kaiser's opinion matter?

Kaiser personally donated $53,500 to Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Ben Bierman, executive vice president of operations donated $5,500 to Obama, and Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing gave $23,000, just to name a few.

Follow the money.

More than a sandwich

I didn't bother with the Chick-fil-A "buycott" yesterday, but a lot of other people did, all over the country. And there's a message in that, although I'm assuming you might not hear what it really is if you rely on the mainstream media.

If you've spent any time near a school in recent years, or had a child in one of those schools, you've heard more than once about an anti-bullying initiative. It's easy to understand both the rationale and value of such initiatives. Unless you live in a cocoon, you will at some point encounter a bully. Most people initially run into them on a playground, but you will find them throughout the course of your life. Intimidation often works, so the temptation to use intimidation is strong, both for a bully on the playground and in other arenas.

There is also little doubt that, at least on the playground, the kid who is most likely to feel a bully's wrath is someone who is different, especially a boy who might come across as somehow effeminate. I saw it happen plenty of times when I was growing up. I was initially bullied in 5th grade, because my family had moved across town and I became the "new kid" at my new school. Eventually I had to fight the kid who was bullying me and after I won the fight, most of the bullying stopped.

That's how it works -- you have to fight back. Anti-bullying initiatives are helpful in schools because they teach kids that using intimidation and threats is, in the end, counterproductive.

Which brings us back to what happened yesterday, all over the country. Following a spate of nastiness from various politicians in Chicago, Boston and elsewhere, Chick-fil-A found itself on the defensive because of the stance of its owner, Dan Cathy, regarding traditional marriage. The chain and its franchisees have been told that they need to get their mind right before they can do business.

So what happened yesterday, when hundreds of thousands people stood in long lines to get sandwiches? It was an anti-bullying initiative. Blogger Bob Owens explains it well:

Clearly, this is more than a “buycott” over gay marriage. If the smattered of people I’ve talked to are representative, homosexuality is a side issue.

This strikes a much deeper, more foundational chord.

The massive crowd reaction locally and nationwide are driven by a loathing of arrogant politicians like those in Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco who feel they have the power and the authority to tell a businessman like Dan Cathy what personal opinions he can and cannot hold if he wants to do business in “their” towns.

They trampled on his religious beliefs. They trampled on his freedom of speech. They attempted to deny him and his franchisees the rights to start small businesses, merely because a free American dared to share what he believed.

I think that's right. We're going to get gay marriage in this country eventually. In the greater scheme of things, it's actually not that important an issue, especially right now when the country is essentially bankrupt and headed for a fiscal disaster decades in the making. What is much more important is retaining the right to disagree. I fully support the right of people to act like a guy Owens saw yesterday:

Cars lined up for the drive-thru stretched out of the parking lot, down the access road, and up the street to the main highway. I tried to get a quick count of the cars, but had to be content with an estimate of 40-60 as they stretched out of sight behind Applebee’s. A solitary driver laid on his horn as he went by the traffic jam, middle finger extended defiantly from the window of his CR-V, his “coexist” bumper sticker mocking those he left in presumably smug satisfaction.

We can choose to "coexist" in any number of ways.

The Bridge

We're already five years on from the collapse of the old 35W bridge. I wrote about it here. An excerpt:

The images, now ubiquitous, are horrifying. The twisted green metal superstructure, tangled and jutting out at bizarre angles, providing a reminder of the incredible force unleashed. The slab of concrete blocks the river flow, with equally large slabs jutting out from the shoreline below, pointing toward the hazy, August sky. The cars, buses and trucks are scattered throughout the site, with unknown numbers of late model vehicles submerged under tons of steel and concrete.

It’s a horrifying thing, the collapse of a major bridge. The rumble of death will reverberate here for a long time. This is the stuff of disaster movies, a Jerry Bruckheimer image writ large and real. We’ll live with the consequences of August 1, 2007 for many years.

Still, there is beauty if you look for it. The performance of the first responders was magnificent; the death toll could have easily reached 100, maybe 200 people, but most likely will be far less. The police and fire departments of Minneapolis, so often the well-deserved targets of invective and ridicule for their petty corruption and silly political correctness, performed with grace, professionalism and amazing calm, given the extent of the calamity they found. The paramedics and doctors arriving on the scene were ready, moved quickly, and saved dozens of people. The Red Cross, whose Minneapolis headquarters sits nearby the scene, provided valuable services and comforted the victims and their families. 

What do you remember about that day?

Harry Reid's Hope and Change

As you read the following quote, remember this -- the man speaking is the majority leader of the United States Senate:

Reid suggested that Romney’s decision to withhold tax information would bar him from ever earning Senate confirmation to a Cabinet post. Then, Reid recalled a phone call his office received about a month ago from “a person who had invested with Bain Capital,” according to The Huffington Post.

Reid said the person told him: “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years.”

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” Reid told HuffPo. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?”

I got a phone call, too, from a person who gave Harry Reid a campaign contribution. He told me that Harry Reid's mother was a hamster and that his father smelt of elderberries. His father smelt of elderberries! No, do I know that's true? Well, I'm not certain. But obviously Reid can't cover the odor of his father with the copious amounts of Hai Karate that he wears on the floor of the Senate. How would it look?

So here's the question for you -- what's more despicable? The majority leader of the U.S. Senate throwing out baseless charges, or the Washington Post dutifully passing them along? As you think about answering that question, ask yourself this -- how would a conveniently unnamed "investor" in Bain know what Mitt Romney paid on his personal income tax?

And of course there's this charming observation from Mr. Reid:

“Where the problem is, is this: Because of the Citizens United decision, Karl Rove and the Republicans are looking forward to a breakfast the day after the election,” Reid said. “They are going to assemble 17 angry old white men for breakfast, some of them will slobber in their food, some will have scrambled eggs, some will have oatmeal, their teeth are gone. But these 17 angry old white men will say, ‘Hey, we just bought America. Wasn’t so bad. We still have a whole lot of money left.’”

Actually, "17 angry old white men" would be a good name for a band. I'd also assume that if these also unnamed 17 angry old white men are rich enough to have "bought America," they can afford better dental care than Reid seems to think they have.

The amazing part of all this -- we're only at the beginning of August. Imagine the ugliness to follow.