It is time to reform our culture so that this trend reverses.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The number of Minnesotans infected with a sexually transmitted disease rose in 2007, as it has every year since 1996.
More than 17,000 people became infected with chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis in 2007. That’s a 3.8 percent increase over 2006.

We need to take our culture back so that Hollywood and MTV no longer make underage and unprotected sex the cool and hip thing to do.

For those taking score, more people got STDs in Minnesota last year than were killed by second hand smoke. 

How about Truth.org start lobbying to ban hookups due to the danger they pose for young Americans who often have dangerous sex due to lack of judgment and alcohol?

I’m headed to Washington next month, and guess who else is, Pope Benedict. This will be my first trip to DC and it should be very exciting. The Pope is also going to be at the White House.

Here’s an interesting piece at NRO about the visit and what may or may not be said during his visit.

(For some reason no one seems to care what I will be saying.) 

WCCO has done the latest of their anti-Republican hit jobs also dubbed, Reality Checks. (I don’t doubt the facts in it, just the fact that they don’t seem to do these sorts of things to attack Democrats very often.)

Regardless, this one hits close to home on how conservatives are less than inspired by the US Senate race this year, thanks in part to incumbent Republican Norm Coleman’s new found affinity for saying he’s not a party guy, which is code for I’m not one of those fringe right wing conservatives, I’m a moderate!

I’ve had pretty good back and forth’s with top folks with in his campaign and his supporters, and just a few months ago, their big push to me and conservatives was that he was an 80% conservative. Think the old Reagan adage about how it is better to have someone you agree with 80% of the time, then 20% of the time…..  (emphasis mine)

Coleman’s has moved away from President Bush as Bush has become less popular. In 2003, he voted to support the President 98 percent of the time, but five years later his support of the president ranks at only 68 percent.

According to Congressional Quarterly, that percentage puts Coleman in the bottom 10 Republicans in loyalty to the president.

“I am willing to work with anybody who helps get the job done,” Coleman said. “There are problems in this country that are too big for one party to solve.”

Well, frankly Coleman himself should be the one his campaign staffers and surrogates are telling that old 80/20 Rule to. Unfortunately the issues where Coleman is on the wrong side of the conservative vs. liberal debate are pretty big issues for me and others. They are the kind of issue where one side wants to have the government overreact and take over sectors of the economy and regulate like stalinistas and the other wants a limited approach with free markets prevailing.

Getting the job done on enviro-lunacy, green energy, mandates, regulations, and the endless string of pork spending and nanny state legislation is the kind of job we know any run-of-the-mill DFL Senator would be perfect for. Case in point: Amy Klobuchar, the freshman Senator from MN is the text book case of what a conservative doesn’t want representing them. Funny how Norm’s name ends up in the paper more with Klobuchar than it does with Kline and Bachmann of late, isn’t it? ….. not to a real conservative like me.

Al Franken has nothing to do with why conservatives, and Minnesotans for that fact, should vote FOR you Norm.  A few months back you were supposed to be conservative enough for us conservatives to be happy with. We were supposed to be happy with your record, but now that you’re become the presumptive nominee, you are pulling a McCain and marginalizing the conservative base of the party in your ads and statements (not to mention the last few years of votes)?

You can’t have it both ways Norm. We conservatives want a lot less Amy and a whole lot more Michele, and not Obama.

Sounds like it was an interesting weekend up in the 8th CD. (Via email & Wright County Republican)

For some reason I am reminded of the movie “Rudy”. If you haven’t seen the inspirational flick about a Notre Dame football walk-on it is worth renting. The subject of this post is the process of vetting candidates at Congressional District Conventions for the coveted position of National Convention Delegate/Alternate.

(from a press release circulated by Rudy Takala)

Minnesota’s 8th Congressional Republicans held their convention last Saturday, electing three delegates and three alternates to attend the national conventions in September. Local candidates included former State Representative Judy Soderstrom of Mora, Rudy Takala of Pine City, and Ben Wiener of Finlayson.

Things became livelier when many people were denied from running by the district Nominating Committee - including Rudy Takala, the chair of the Pine County Republicans. Ron Niemala, the chair of the committee, declared that he was too “young and inexperienced” to be permitted to run for delegate.

Dr. Michael Monte, secretary to the Pine County Republicans and a member of the committee, objected, saying, “We have some very qualified, enthusiastic candidates who have put a lot of time into running, and they should be allowed to compete.”

Niemala responded, “This is not up for discussion. We [the committee] are going to vote and go along with the vote.”

The civility of the discourse diminished when Christina Wilson, the vice-chair of the committee, held a copy of Takala’s Facebook page on display and pointed out that it described his political views as “libertarian,” arguing that it was inconsistent with the values of the Republican Party. Dr. Monte, a Baptist minister, attempted to continue the discourse but was told to “shut up” by Wilson.

The battle spilled on to the floor of the convention, where Monte described the committee to the more than 200-member assembly as a “travesty.” Takala continued, “This is what turns people off of Republican politics. They show up and are told that the decisions have already been made. Leadership tells the delegates what to do rather than the other way around.”

A motion was made to change the rules in order to allow for nominations from the floor without the consent of the committee. It passed, allowing eighteen people in all to run for national delegate. In order to win, candidates needed to obtain fifty-five percent of the votes. Candidates with less than twenty-percent were eliminated from the running.

Of the eighteen people running, five remained after the first round of voting, including Soderstrom and Takala. Soderstrom won on the second round. Takala continued to compete until the fourth round, where he was finally eliminated and thereby placed fourth overall.

The election for national alternates went considerably more smoothly. Ben Wiener won on the fourth round of balloting.

Takala praised the process, observing, “In most years, there are not enough freedom-minded delegates to overrule leadership. That so many were present this year is a big difference, and I can only hope that all of the new people will remain involved.” He offered his congratulations to Soderstrom and Wiener, “It encourages me that we have so many high-quality members in our area of the congressional district.”

Takala plans to run for national delegate again at the state level. The Republican state convention will take place in Rochester on May 29-31st and elect ten delegates to the national convention.

It will be interesting to see how other CD’s fair. I’m hearing a lot of chatter about how it could be very ugly in some.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar endorses B.O. for Prez.

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama picked up the endorsement of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar Sunday night, giving him another superdelegate supporter.

In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Klobuchar said Obama “has inspired an enthusiasm and idealism that we have not seen in this country in a long time.”

Clearly that’s a shot not only at the Bush administartion, but also previous administrations….. and who was the previous administration?

Hell hath no furry like a woman Clinton scorned.

“My endorsement reflects both Barack’s strong support in my state and my own independent judgment about his abilities,” Klobuchar said.

I guess Ms. Clinton won’t be hosting any more fund raisers for  A-Klo.

In unrelated other news.

Souksangouane Phengsene, the man convicted of and imprisoned for criminal vehicular homicide after killing Minnesota Timberwolves player Malik Sealy in a 2000 crash, has been jailed once again on suspicion of driving while under the influence.

Phengsene, 51, was in the Hennepin County jail late Sunday in lieu of bail after he was booked at 2 a.m. Sunday on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Amy Klobuchar was first elected the Hennepin County Attorney in 1998 and served until January of 2007 when she was inaugurated to the US Senate. The death by drunken driver happened under Klobuchar’s watch and the man who was drunk behind the wheel of the car got off easy under Klobuchar’s watch. A cornerstone talking point for Klobuchar was her work in getting the Felony DWI law passed by the MN Legislature, but unfortunately it wasn’t a cornerstone of her work in the Hennepin County Attorney’s office.

Hill asked me to tell you not to bother calling again. But can I get a card in case my brother Roger gets into trouble again and needs a good attorney?

The long arm of the law is after you.

Indeed, there does seem to be a new development. We are getting reports from our participating bars that health inspectors are arriving in person at the bar, demanding to see the owner and presenting him/her with a document stating: (1) we believe you have been hosting Theater Night in your bar; (2) the MN Department of Health has determined that Theater Night in bars violates the state’s smoking ban; and (3) by signing this document, you agree not to host Theater Night again and avoid the possiblity of being fined up to $10,000. They are also taking pictures for quote “evidence”.

I couldn’t figure out why they were doing this at first, outside of sheer harassment and intimidation. But then I checked Minn. Stat. 144.99, Subd. 4 (administrative penalty orders) which gives the MDH the authority to issue fines. To issue a fine under the procedures outlined in Minn. Stat. 144.991, an adminstrative penalty order “must include”:
(1) a concise statement of the facts alleged to constitute a violation;
(2) a reference to the section of the statute, rule, variance, order, stipulation agreement, or term or condition of a permit that has been violated;
(3) a statement of the amount of the administrative penalty to be imposed and the factors upon which the penalty is based; and
(4) a statement of the person’s right to review of the order.

(my emphasis.) It appears pretty clear to me that our dedicated public servants at the MDH have hit upon a way to enforce the smoking ban — by getting unsuspecting bar owners to enter into a “stipulation agreement”. This would be the hook by which a bar owner would expose himself or herself to legal enforcement by the MDH of the smoking ban.

Because they don’t got the law — and they know it.

That’s why they have been going out en masse and in person to get quick signatures on these documents — and catch us off guard. We are warning our people of what will happen if they sign it.

Did I Miss When They Banned Roads?

Are people really stupid enough to think that we can build trains to solve our transportation needs? No seriously do the bureaucrats who set policy really think that we can have a car-less Twin Cities? I’m reading through a Strib Editorial and a Commentary by one of the liberal special interest lobbyists and I am just flat out amazed at their lack of ability to see the real world before their eyes.

In this Editorial, the Strib is whining about the budget shortfall and blaming any potential cuts solely on Pawlenty. Well maybe the Strib needs to take a step back and think about what the budget deficit would look like if the DFL Legislature had gotten to increase all the spending they wanted and tried to? Our state government would be far worse off if Pawlenty had not reigned in spending last session.

Had Pawlenty done what people like me had hoped, and held government growth to inflationary rates (or less), not double digit budget growth, who knows, maybe we wouldn’t have so much trouble trying to fund the bloated budget, despite all-time high revenues being collected.

Does the term, “We have a spending problem” sound familiar?

You see, this Editorial notes that the MVST (Vote Yes Amendment) revenues are down because we citizens, aren’t buying as many new cars as they had hoped. Despite their claims to be creating a permanent revenue stream for transit, they didn’t. A lot of us knew it was a stupid idea to fund transit with taxes on cars. Just think about it, if people can’t afford a car, they would possibly need a bus to take, but since they didn’t buy the car, they didn’t pay the tax to fund the bus.

Which came first, the tax or the revenue?

So here we have another example of raising taxes or dedicating certain ones to fund specific projects is a failure waiting to happen. The shortsighted nature of the socialists in St. Paul and the Strib just can’t be by chance. I can’t accept that they are pure populists who aim to tax and spend on the latest project that is popular.

I think it is all part of a grander plan. They aimed to expand transit beyond any dedicated tax’s ability to fund it, and with Pawlenty’s help they have done just that. The train has left the station, I just hope we can stop it from becoming a runaway freight train. We’re pushing looming shortfalls in transit funding off onto our children.

Yes, yes, we’re building boondoggle choo choos that will cost tens of millions a year just simply to maintain. They won’t provide transportation solutions. If we dedicated 100% of the State Budget for a biennium solely to build all the choo choo train lines that are on the minds of the social engineers, the system still wouldn’t provide a service that would accommodate Twin Citian’s fast paced and frantic lives.

We don’t live A to B lives.

The argument of reducing congesstion is laughable at best based on the reality of Hwy 55 after Hiawatha. Plus if these mystical new choo choos did make enough stops to be convenient enough so people could almost have A to B to C to D to A service, it would be stopping so dang much the trips would take 3 times as long as they would by car.

So the social engineers may get their dream of getting us out of our cars so we’re not in it when we should be with our families, but unfortunately, we’ll be sitting on some stupid choo choo train next to a bum who smells like urine. And then there’s that fact that we just noted earlier, as in since we didn’t buy a car, there’s no money to operate the trains.

In the Commentary, we get to see some grand revisionist history like only a special interest lefty could dream up. The author is the head of transit for livable communities, in other words, another liberal group who wants everyone to live in the same socialist utopia with big shiny and bright choo choo trains.

Before the 0.25 cent sales tax was passed, government officials, the business community and transit supporters outlined a need for a bare minimum of an additional $100 million per year for transit to maintain current service and meet the needs of the region’s growing population.

Um, the bill that they passed couldn’t do that. In fact they wrote it so that the sales tax increase couldn’t be used to pay for the current bus service. It can only be used for new ‘transitways’. Did this lefty get left out of the tax increase conference call? She does go on to point out another dirty little secret of all these transit dreams the social engineers have.

As Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell has stated, both today’s bus service and tomorrow’s hoped-for rail lines are now threatened if the governor (Bell’s boss) continues to call for general fund cuts to transit.

In the Editorial I linked to above, Bell claims that if Minnesota cuts bus services, that the Feds won’t send money for choo choos. (Maybe they should look at the bus routes pre and post Hiawatha!) I’ve also heard that the Fridley station for Northstar could also put the project at risk. I’m not sure why yet, but it sounds like Minnesota is trying to get that rolling under the cover of dark so the Feds don’t know about it. For some reason the Feds just don’t send out checks from the Treasury and let local bureaucrats spend it willy nilly on failing or destined to fail projects.

We need to face the facts here and stop the pie in the sky social planning.

Roads are the key to solving our congestion. We can barely afford to pay for the buses on the roads, now sure, a skeptic like me has to think buying all those “green” buses may have skimmed a bit of the operating revenues, but I’ll admit we do have funding problems. But take a look at all those buses in this photo from the Strib story on their rollout. We’re going to have 172 of them at $557,000 a piece. Thankfully the Feds pick up most of that tab, but is still $95,804,000. That’s a lota green! 

We’re spending too damn much money in this state and nationallyon a bunch of hooey! We waste more money in this state than we have shortfalls in bus funding. The Legislature is set to bond for $70 million for another choo choo that will add another double digit million dollars in operating costs for Metro transit. That’s more money diverted from practical transit solutions (buses) to Poggemiller and Kelliher’s desired government issued vehicle (Central Corridor will pretty much runs from ther front doors to their offices at the state Capital).

Roads, roads, roads, roads.

Why won’t anyone mention roads? Roads are what we drive on. Trains aren’t flexible enough to stop at the drug store, grab some milk, drop the kid of at school, get to work, meet an old friend for lunch, back to work, then to the soccer field or hockey rink to see your kid’s game, then off to Space Alien’s to celebrate the big win, and get home in time to get to bed to repeat the same basic thing the next day.

We could raise taxes 100% in Minnesota across the board, but we’re never going to be able to afford the choo choo system that would benefit us all, let alone solve our transportation needs. The choo choo system that would make a dent into getting cars off the roads, system wide, would cost tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars. We can’t afford that.

I repeat, when the heck did they ban roads? Roads are the cheapest way to help the most people. We don’t need to build a train, operate it, and have it go to everyone’s doorway. We just need to quit wasting money, investing in boondoggles, and add lanes!

Roads, roads, roads, roads! There’s a far cheaper way to help people get around, they are roads, we should try prioritizing their funding for a change.

Mark Huering has a post at True North pointing out how center right bloggers in Minnesota missed an event the other day and haven’t even mentioned it.

But as yesterday spread into today, I started to notice something. Many of the other prominent center-right voices in the Minnesota blogosphere hadn’t written anything about the event, either.

What event did we miss or ignore? Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign kickoff. Was it intentional? I don’t think so. I’ve choosen to avoid Coleman’s events due to issues with people who would be there.  And like the other bloggers out there I’ve been busy on other things on and off the blogs.

Most of us, like Mark mentioned, have other things to do and need to bring home that pay check. We make decisions on what we go out of our way to do. Taking a morning off work to watch an incumbent announce his reelection campaign, which has been active for 6 months already, doesn’t seem quite as important as, say, covering a County Board meeting where they raise taxes for boondoggles or watching obsessed stalkerazzi dingbats slam our troops.

As I have been pointing out since Caucuses, Coleman is slipping off the radar screen for conservatives. His latest ad is all about how he is an independent. Well fine. I’m independent too, especially when it comes to choosing on where and when i devote my time and energy to covering events. That shoe fits both feet.

I have a letter in the Star Tribune today.

BACHMANN’S BULBS
The other side
In the March 26 Blog House, Tim O’Brien decided to run a partisan attack from a DFL blogger against Rep. Michele Bachmann. O’Brien decided to note their off-topic attacks and even used the phrase ‘dim bulb’ as a lead in.

My blog, residualforces.com, also addressed the subject, but mine was in support of Bachmann and her plan to save the light bulb, so it was ignored.

I wrote, “In an attempt to reverse the stupefying move by the dim bulbs who wrote and supported the energy bill, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R MN6) is authoring a bill to bring back the light bulb. … In case you didn’t know, the recent energy bill has put the incandescent light bulb on the endangered species list and will ban the sale of them altogether in the very near future. Bachmann opposed the social engineering Energy bill which actually created no new energy and, in fact, was designed to make it harder and more expensive to get reliable and abundant energy.”

Maybe my comments just didn’t fit the anti-Bachmann agenda. Liberals always seem to demand choice, so long as they get to control the options. (You can also find some more fabulous factual coverage at truthvmachine.com.)

So for those of you who read O’Brien’s column, please keep in mind that what Bachmann is trying to do is allow you to choose the light bulb you want — it has nothing to do with bedrooms.

ANDY APLIKOWSKI, BLAINE

Here’s the post I quoted. Bachmann Aims To Bring Back Da Bulbs

It has been a while since I did any self-gradulating truck posting, so here goes. (i’m doing so cuz I said I’d post a pic of my latest bumper sticker addition earlier today.)

That’s the new GlobalClimateScam.com sticker.

Here you can see my Fred ‘08, Bachmann, and Taxpayer’s League (Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. )

Here’s the profile.

Here’s the front. That’s a Warn Trans4mer grille guard Rhino lined with the front receiver tube and holding some Hella Black Magic lights. I have an RDS auxilary fuel tank/tool box on order that should be here in a few weeks.

The new RF One is a bit more technical to care for with the Duramax diesel engine, and the factory tank at 21 gallons is pretty much a pain in the spare. The dash rattles beyond tollerance at times, but with 365 HP & 620 foot pounds of torque…….. roh roh roh!

Mileage is not what I had hoped due to the new Federal emissions BS (down 25ish percent from engine models before the new standards), but it is still better than the old RF’s 8.1L gas engine.

I do love her and so do the dogs.