The Biggest Threat

I was depressed and saddened from footage on NBC tonight so I did a quick google search ("why below sea level new orleans built") about New Orleans and how it was built below sea level. I didn't find my answer yet, but the second ranked article was this one. The title is Vulnerable Cities: New Orleans (also articles for Long Island, Tampa, Miami Galveston and Wilmington).

A hurricane approaching the city from the east, virtually at the mouth of the Mississippi River, "would drive the lake water southward into the city. So under the right circumstances, the flooding may be more severe coming from the lake than that coming from the Gulf (of Mexico)," said Jay Grimes, Louisiana State Climatologist.

The levees that protect the city from flooding are also a flood threat themselves. "The biggest threat that the city has is that of a slow moving Category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane, which would create a surge of water that could be up to 30 feet high. Now if this (high) water comes into the city, it will top the levees. It will go over the top of the levees and actually fill up the city," said Hijuelos.

Sadly, now this article has been proven correct.

Grandparents, Chickens and Politicians = State Fair

2006 Elections The family had a great day at the fair today. Grandpa was doing his civic duty with one of the fireman's items today. He also explained all the types of chickens to my lovely wife and kids because he and his dad raised show chickens. On the way to the chickens we had a Klobuchar sighting! (I pointed her out to my parents and they vaguely recognized her.) I actually almost ran into her literally at the fair today. She was not in "press the flesh" mode at the time, but I noticed she walked somewhat anonymously through the crowd. How good is her statewide name recognition? I understand the DFL insiders love her and Hennepin County residents know her, but maybe KvM is on to something? When an out-state person hears Klobuchar is running for Senate will this image appear in their mind?

Maybe she needs to try to pull more stuff like Hatch's Medica fiasco to get herself on TV more? Hoping for a more positive outcome, of course.

Busted! I Confess!

Much has been made about me and MDE lately. You got me! The jig is up! I confess... when I post as SD63 I look like this:

When I post as MDE, I look more like this:

And when I look in the mirror each morning I see this:

(Attention Mr. George Lucas, please don't hurt me... these photos are just links to other websites like a online movie store and this place.)

Forced to Post

Miscellaneous OK, I really am much to busy with my real job and my real life to post today, but I have been forced into it today. It appears that the anonymous poster behind MDE is actually ME. It is posted at here at Checks and Balances, but it looks like you must pay to see the post. Thanks to nk2134 for copying the post to the comments section on MDE. Here is the post:

Minnesota Democrats Exposed (Exposed)

"If you google the name Jerome Plagge you will find information on his activity in the blogsphere for Republican Senate District 63 (Richfield). There is also a link to a story from his blog about living a red life in a blue district on something called blogshares.com. As one delves a little deeper you see that in blogshares.com Minnesota Democrats Exposed is one of the most traded blog shares.

"So recent information that has come our way is the Jerome Plagge is the person behind Minnesota Democrats Exposed. It will be interesting to see if now the anonymous source behind MDE either confirms or denies this idea. We encourage the folks at MDE to contact us and tell it how it is."

After picking myself off the floor, I realized I should maybe be nervous because MDE is so good he is making a few enemies and I don't want a dead fish wrapped in paper delivered to my wife. So let me state unequivocally, SD63, aka Jerome Plagge, IS NOT MDE. Compare the posting style and posting patterns (especially in July). I only wish I had MDE sources, in fact I have only two permanent sources, ME & this thing called "the web". I occasionally stumble on to another source, but it is pure luck. MDE is usually one of the first 4 blogs I read each day and so I often link him or follow-up on stuff he has already exposed (e.g. the Mpls Asst. Attorney story where I used by IT skills/experience to "expose" what I perceived to be a lie by Ms. Conroy). As for the BlogShares.com stuff, did you, the author (Towle?) at C&B, actually read and understand what BlogShares is? It is a game, I think. I believe the point is for people to "buy" and "sell" play shares in blogs trying to increase there "wealth". When I first saw MDE in February I thought this blog was going to be big so I bought shares. You see conservatives who believe in captitalism and the free-market like stuff like BlogShares, especially those like me who do not have enough cash (heavy tax burden) to play the real markets. To accuse me and MDE to be one in the same is akin to saying cute little Anakin Skywalker are Darth Vader are the same... wait a minute... Trust me he is not me and I am not him. UPDATE: You can also read about me at Lloydletta's and DFL Guv.

Ruffini Presidential Straw Poll

2008 Elections Put your guy over the top, go vote now!

This one should be fun. It's pretty much all the likely candidates as they stand today in a main ballot, and a bonus ballot with the opportunity to vote for four of your favorite fantasy contenders. Once you get to the results page, you'll see exactly which likely candidates the fantasy candidates take the most from. Here's another reason why this one's the Big One. On your ballot, you'll have the opportunity to mark your state. If this poll is as big as the last one (@13,000 responses), we'll have a statistically valid sample of online activists not just nationally, but in most of the fifty states. On the results page, you can filter the results by state, by region, or by Red vs. Blue states.

Afford Him the Same

Miscellaneous (I'm sure this has been well covered, but I just saw this video that I wanted to point out.) Will John Roberts be afforded the same respect of Justice Ginsberg? Will he be allowed to not answer just as she was? If you go here, you can see a nice little video where Justice Ginsberg refuses to answer nine questions. At the end of this same video, you will see and hear Senator Orin Hatch speak extremely respectfully of Justice Ginsberg and President Clinton. I wrote these quotes from the video so I may miss a word, but the link is above for you to hear yourself. The video does not specify the time or details about the Hatch interview. Here are the quotes, emphasis added:

"I think you stand up for good people even if you don't fully agree with them"

"... and we have a President who happens to differ with me, but he was elected and he picked Ruth Bader Ginsberg who has an excellent record, who has a great judicial temperament as you can easily see, who is a fine legal scholar, who is honest and decent, who has the physical capacity to do this job and frankly who am I to stand here and say this President shouldn't have who he wants ..."

It will be interesting to see if Roberts gets any Democrats speaking like this for him too.

Get A Life!

Miscellaneous A guy (I presume he/she is a he) I read must not have kids or a wife because he obviously spends a lot of time working on exposing the DFL and not much else. I'm speaking of MDE, of course. Here is his latest, which is related to this. Why do I point this out? Simple, what the Kennedy campaign did was a non-story to begin with, but since it was pointed out by Pioneer Press and the Red Star I believe it is important to point out that they are not the only group that will use press excerpts to highlight the positive elements of the story. The difference is that the Kennedy "story" hit the wire and was posted on ABCnews.com, news.yahoo.com, duluthsuperior.com, chicagotribune.com, kstp.com, wcco.com, aolnews and the most obscure one yet, MyMotherLode.com, in Sonora, CA. I could continue, but I think you get the point. Of course you also have the Democrats who ranted and raved about it in the usual places, democraticunderground and Centrisity, but even the almighty MN DFL party is not immune to skillfully dissecting a press article to point out the postive. OK, back to MDE now, I'm really just kidding MDE, don't take it personal.

Classic!

Miscellaneous I have visions of scrambling DFL workers modifying documents posted on websites. See here.

It even looks like one of my readers, Dave the DFL SD63 Chair, could involved? OK, he probably is just posting the documents he receives from someone else, but why not have some fun with it?

Now if you will excuse me I have to go check the file properties of a few Word documents.

Crow Anyone?

MN House I am little embarrassed because in this post I wondered "out loud" what various representatives thought about a proposed piece of legislation. Less that eight hours later I received an answer from one of them in the comments of the post. Well, the answer was already out there, he just reminded me. Here is Representative Paul Thissen's (63A) position:

To answer your question, I actually was Chief Author of legislation this year (before the Supreme Court decision and before everyone jumped on the bandwagon) to limit eminent domain in situations where property is taken from one private entity and given to another. See HF 1618. Here is a link if anyone is interested to other information about my position on eminent domain. Eminent domain position on Thissenformn.com[link modified for HTML reasons] StarTribune quote posted on thissenformn website [link modified for HTML formatting reasons] I do not think the total prohibition called for by Sen. Bachman and Rep. Vanderveer and several others is the best policy result, but additional restrictions and proof requirements by cities and more substantive review by Courts -- as well as fairer compensation in general -- makes absolute sense. Anyway - keep up your good work. I like to read your posts.

After the friendly reminder I did recall reading the StarTribune post and the bill itself a few months back, but the summer heat wave must have damaged my connections a bit. It is good to know Rep Thissen reads my blog on occasion, I guess I may have to be a little more polite?

Curious

MN Senate , MN House, 2006 Elections HT to KvM for this post about new legislation Bachmann will propose. I am very curious where Paul Thissen, Dan Larson , Jane Ranum and the various city officials of Minneapolis, Richfield and Bloomington would fall on this issue. I am confident one guy I know would support the idea of limiting the use of eminent domain.

Disengaging

Amazing events are happening in parts of Israel these days. Even as the Jews leave voluntarily or "leave" forcibly, the Palestinians have been heard chanting that they will continue the bombings.

Nice Try, But Not Quite

Minneapolis As usual, MDE exposed another MN Democrat, this time it was Assistant Minneapolis City Attorney and current chair of the Minneapolis DFL Party Lois Regnier Conroy. The StarTribune picked up the story and sought Ms. Conroy for an explanation. The problem is that most competent Microsoft Word users can see right through her excuse.

Lois Regnier Conroy said she opened a disc containing an old fundraising letter one evening at her office before e-mailing it to her home computer, which she used to edit and send out the new letter.

Here is the problem, if you look at the pictures below (HT: MDE) you can see the "Company" data for the file is attached to the file summary information.

File summary info

This company data is applied to the file summary field two ways. First, if you create a new file it takes the company data from the software installation for the PC currently being used (This company data populated when the software is installed). The other way this data would be added to the file summary is for someone to deliberately open the file summary data and type in the name. If you open an existing file, as she claims she did, the company name in the file summary is NOT modified it would leave the original data.

The evidence discredits her explanation and even if the file was an "old fundraising letter", that "old" letter was created on a (her?) City of Minneapolis PC. So her explanation is either a lie or a confession that the original file was created using tax dollar resources sometime in the past.

Originally, I thought this story was just mildly amusing and annoying because someone was caught misusing tax payer money, but the apparent lie to the newspaper and public makes is more disturbing.

'Virtual Victory'

Thanks to a friend for sending me a link to a ScrappleFace post. I have never heard of this site before and I stumbled on to this post from 8/4/05. I enjoyed it so much I thought I should share. (Disclaimer: ScrappleFace seems to be similar to the "the Onion", if you don't know what that is, then check them out yourself, especially if you find yourself in need of a good laugh). Here is the full post:

After Ohio, Dems Map 50-State 'Virtual Victory' Plan by Scott Ott (2005-08-04) -- Encouraged by their close loss in this week's special election for a vacant House seat in Ohio, the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has mapped a 50-state "virtual victory" strategy for 2006 and 2008. "It feels so good to almost win," said DNC chairman Howard Dean. "We now believe we can rally our base around the hope of down-to-the-wire losses in traditionally Republican districts coast-to-coast." While the concept of virtual victory is familiar to the party that nearly won the presidency in 2000 and 2004, this is the first time the DNC will stake millions of dollars on advertising explicitly promoting narrow defeats. The ad campaign is tentatively titled "Close Counts." "People need something to believe in," said Mr. Dean. "And while it's tough to believe that a party with no coherent platform can return to power, most progressives still believe this is the party of the little guy. Of course, the little guy usually loses, but we want our major donors to be able to say, in the words of Maxwell Smart, 'missed it by that much.'" In related news, America Coming Together, the progressive fundraising group backed by billionaire George Soros which failed to make a difference for Democrats in swing states in 2004, today announced it would disband and form a new, leaner organization with the narrow mission of handling money transfers from wealthy contributors to political strategists and consultants. "America Coming Together fulfilled that mission in 2004," said Mr. Soros. "As a businessman, I focus on results. So we have moved the goalposts to reflect the results we achieved."

Taking John Kerry's Advice

The site is getting a little facelift with some color changes. There may be a few kinks in the process, but when all is said and done I hope it looks a little better. Senator Kerry said my colors were just not good in certain lighting, but I decided against his advice on the Botox thing.

Once "They" Have It, They Don't Let Go

Federal People from both sides of the ailse will find this article by Forbes interesting. Any true conservative should be truly annoyed from a taxation perspective and I'm sure our lefty friends will use it to point to Congress and accuse the Reuplicans because they control both houses. What it does point out is that while our system is the best political system ever, there are flaws that will never go away. As voters we must be vocal and vigilant to do our part to limit. If you read the article you'll see that both sides are guilty of stuffing the "pockets" of the districts with pork and I've included a few of my "favorite" excerpts here.

These earmarks help the politically connected from coast to coast. ... $500,000 to pay for street and sidewalk work outside New York's Museum of Modern Art and $35 million to pay for road improvements around Wal-Mart Stores' corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The point of course, is to allow each politician to put out a press release reminding constituents of his or her efforts on behalf of the district.

And yes, Minnesota is even guilty!

Some of the goodies in the bill don't even relate to America's highways. According to CQ Today, a daily briefing of congressional activity, "Limousine services, fishing-rod retailers, sight-seeing flight operators, gunsmiths and alcohol producers were among the beneficiaries of tax breaks added to the bill. …The bill also includes earmarks for bike paths, pedestrian trails and ferry terminals. … [as well as] $2.8 million for a nature preserve in Chicago, and $1.3 million for construction of a visitor center on the Mesabi trail in the city of Virginia, Minnesota."

This is why conservatives do not like raising taxes, especially if they are supposed to be "temporary". All you Hennepin County residents and stadium supporters pay close attention. Our nice little sales tax for the stadium will most likely never go away once it gets on the books:

As Heritage points out, the Highway Trust Fund was created to fund an interstate highway system that was largely completed by the early 1980s. But don't count on Congress to loosen its hold on the money. As a Cato Institute report observes, "It is now a slush fund for Congress to fund programs aimed at appeasing special interests and financing non-highway projects."

An attempt to fix the problem is being driven by one brave Republican though, Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ).

Still, even a few on the Hill are calling for change. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), whose state gets back 92% of its contributions, is pushing a reform bill that would let states opt out of the federal gas tax, in part or entirely, and so free them from compliance with many federal transportation-related regulations and mandates. "The National Interstate Highway System has been completed," said Garrett in a statement. "There needs to be a new system set in place that allows the states more discretion over the transportation programs, maximizes the resources available for our transportation system, and is more equitable for New Jersey and other donor states like it."

Good luck Scott!

Sporting Event Poll Results

Polls

Surprise, the Super Bowl was the big winner in the poll. I think I might be all three votes for the TdF (You could vote once per week so I tried to fix it just like the Democrats in Chicago).

Sporting event poll results.

Polar Opposites

I added two sites to my list of links. RM is just as he advertises, shamelessly partisan, and Zakcq is probably one my most consistent readers so it is only fair for me to link to his blog. Zakcq is a nice guy and intelligent, however if he was alive during the Red Scare I would have feared for his life. Here they are: Republican Minnesota Zakcq - my favorite Commy UPDATE: In the comments Zakcq makes a good point, it was a simple mistake, not a purposeful thing. Zakcq - my favorite Socialist

Richfield or Rosenberg's Proclamation?

Richfield Thanks to Peggy Handt for her letter to the Richfield Sun-Current. It seems that Peggy is taking issue with Council member Rosenberg's proclamation designating June 2005 as Gay, Lesbian, Transgender Pride Celebration Month in Richfield. Excerpt from minutes of June 14, 2005 council meeting:

Item #2 - PRESENTATION OF PROCLAMATION DESIGNATING JUNE 2005 AS GAY,LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER PRIDE CELEBRATION MONTH IN RICHFIELD Council Member Rosenberg presented to Mark Olson, Human Rights Commission Chair, a proclamation designating June 2005 as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Celebration Month in Richfield.

Peggy says:

I think the residents of Richfield should be made publicly aware that at the June 14 City Council meeting, Susan Rosenberg made a presentation of proclamation designating June 2005 as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month in Richfield. Such a proclamation infers that we Richfield residents all go along with the idea. Maybe I am a minority, maybe I am not. But I really believe it is inappropriate for any City Council member to impose his or her personal beliefs on sexual issues upon the residents of their city. Peggy Handt Richfield

Richfield Republicans Meeting

Richfield The Richfield Republican City Committee is having a General Meeting this weekend. The have some business to attend to, but the main topic will be immigration, specifically the proposed ordinance that is in the hands of the city's Human Rights Commission. All interested Republicans are welcome, here are the details:

Richfield Community Center 7000 Nicollet Avenue South Saturday, August 6th 9:45 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Agenda: Current Affairs Immigration Issues Affecting Richfield Ratifcation of by-laws

As Wayne Campbell Used to Say

July is over, time to get back to SD63. Game on!