Small Town America

Lindstrom, MN :)

Taken out the car window. Stuck out my left hand. (I was stopped)

Flashes of red

On the wing. And poppies around town this Memorial Day weekend.

Tea Party New Year

One nation, under God. Bless America.

A Ninja Cow Before Christmas

The legend out of Nebraska.

Occupy yourselves, lefties

Listen and learn. Via small dead animals, Daniel Hannan's 10 pt memo to the OWS crowd. This is pretty funny:

We are not against equality. We generally recognise the benefits in Scandinavian-style homogeneity: crime tends to be lower, people are less stressed etc.

Get honest.

Talking Turkey

The cost of a Thanksgiving dinner is up 13%.

And millennials are moving in with the 'rents:

According to Census data, 5.9 million Americans between 25 and 34 years of age—nearly a quarter of whom have bachelor's degrees—live with their parents, a significant increase from 4.7 million before the recession.

But many parents can't afford the extra expense. A full 26% of those polled by the nonprofit group took on more debt to help their offspring, 13% delayed a planned life event such as a home purchase, and 7% postponed retirement.

Compounding the problem is the fact that certain parents are crowding the younger generation out of the job market because their support of their grown kids means they can't afford to retire.

It's potluck around the table. That pricey turkey economy.

P.S. Retirement wars. The growing "wealth gap" between old and young could get ugly as it dawns on the latter that they won't have anything to retire on. #OccupyReality  Some of their parents won't either. 
...Time for a classic --crossposted at BackyardConservative

The Fraudulent Franken Majority

Minnesota leads the nation in voter fraud convictions:... as a tiny non-profit corporation, we netted more than double the number of convictions in one year than the US Department of Justice was able to find in five

Generational Warfare. "Stop calling our country Taxdonia. This is Lovelandia!

MoDo notwithstanding--oh, yeah, we're the crazy ones--It's worse than we think:

If we keep raising successive generations’ lifetime net tax rates, we will eventually be hitting up our progeny for every penny they earn, leaving them unable to consume or save. If they can’t save, they can’t invest, which means they won’t be able to maintain -- let alone increase -- the economy’s stock of capital needed to produce goods and services.

The U.S., incidentally, has a national savings rate of zero and a domestic net investment rate of only 4 percent of national income. Both are postwar lows.

Memo to House Republicans: Budget balance doesn’t imply generational balance.[snip]

So what's the bottom line, hmm?

The Youngsters have hired some young economists to use generational accounting to examine the lifetime net tax treatment of different cohorts. Their report isn’t pretty. It shows that past cohorts received, on a lifetime basis, far more than they put in and that the current young are being asked to participate in a Ponzi scheme.

They also learn that measuring debt is a meaningless labeling game since the government can take from the young with the words “taxes,” rather than “borrowing,” and incur debts via promises of future repayment that are tied to the “taxes.”

Today's young aren't feeling the love. They thought it was embodied in Obama. Now more than a few are figuring out he's an empty suit.

Who will be the next young, hot star? 

P.S. Rep. Joe Walsh (TEA Party R-IL): Sen. Rob Portman: Matching debt increases with spending cuts will balance the budget in a decade without raising taxes. Wall Street Journal

UPDATE: Doorbell, a Powerline entry: 

   --crossposted at BackyardConservative

You're gonna make it after all, Minnesota:)

Was the beer impasse the impetus? The GOP largely prevails:)

Mark Dayton's Big Accomplishment: MN Shutdown

Thank you Gov. Dayton

Yes, Mark Dayton should be commended, he's not pitching a tent and keeping a state park open just for him, no, no, no. Mark Dayton makes do.

Is Governor Dayton a Man of His Word?

Minnesota Majority

Dems Choose Class Warfare on the Eve of Independence Day

The president took his opening salvo, starting his campaign a year early, demonizing yet another group of Americans. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) calls him out on the Senate floor as engaging in behavior more akin to that of a third world leader. Video.

We have a jobless summer, only one in four teens is employed. The minimum wage was raised by Dems when they controlled both Houses in 2007, costs have gone up, tax and regulatory uncertainty is rife, yet the president picks a fight with job creators.

A case in point in Minnesota, where the new Dem governor faces a new Republican legislature. Despite the governor's claims of cuts, the GOP House and Senate actually increased spending slightly over the previous year, balancing the budget without a tax increase. You can just watch the first 5 minutes of this clip for the gist of it. "Whether we tax one group of people or the whole state, it's debt we cannot afford". But Dem Governor Dayton wants to play the class warfare card, so he shut down the state government. [what stays open, what closes] A millionaire himself, his initial shutdown plan--clearly a priority over budget negotiations--kept his chef and gardener at the governor's mansion, classifying them as essential services. And when the governor, prior to the election, in October of last year, was asked if he would shut down the government to achieve his tax increase, he said no. Yet here we are.

Back in DC, Treasury Sec. Tim Turbotax Geithner is the last of the Obama econ advisers to abandon ship. Tax and spend seems to have sunk this country.

Will we still be the land of the free and the home of the brave when our children inherit America?

The Stamp Acts and duties on tea that the British government imposed from afar from the 1760s onward were not symptoms of a deep hatred and mistrust between the center and periphery of the English-speaking world; they were not flash points for anger swelling up from deeper causes. The taxes -- illegal in the English tradition, according to the Colonists, since they violated the rights of free Englishmen to make their own fiscal rules through representatives in Parliament -- were themselves the specific issue on which the Colonists staked their lives and their honor. They would not be browbeaten or oppressed or enslaved, they would not be taxed.

They would not be hijacked and mugged to serve ends about which they had not been consulted. And the Crown knew what they were saying; but it needed the money.

Let's remember why we defied King George.

   --crossposted at BackyardConservative

Dayton finally comes to the table. What's for lunch

Having found him unable to disagree agreeably over lunch on a social occasion back when he was completing his term as state auditor, I know he can be wild in a small group setting.

Minnesota Polls Red on Blue Governor

The spoiled aristobrat Dem Governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton--remember him, the Senator who fled D.C. in fear--is getting a slap in the face from his constituents. True North with the KSTP poll.

Perhaps they read about his spending priorities, keeping the chef and gardener--let me eat cake--while letting the rest of the state go hang.

The liberal Minneapolis Star Tribune thinks the newly-elected Republican legislature should split the difference--gee, let's just go in the red a little less bloody with borrowed money (tax the rich!), but the new GOP Senate majority leader--she's hanging tough:)

(Wisconsin's not doing too badly these days either.)

I watched this play out in the city at the #ro11 conference this weekend. Illinois could learn a thing or two.

Powerline with more.

  --crossposted at BackyardConservative

“Fargo...It’s a way to offshore without necessarily going as far as India or China.”

Microsoft's been there 10 years and growing. Lower costs are key, especially in this costly Big Government environment.

Approaching a century ago, can we learn from Calvin Coolidge to help us now? Chicago Boyz. Capitalism and freedom, and some really ugly current charts.

Over in Kansas City: U.S. economy is being suffocated by uncertainty. Crushing regulations and credit squeeze.

From savvy Mary in Illinois:

Watch some of the French Open this weekend. Miss Li, freed from the government run sports program, is now the first from her nation to win a grand slam event. In addition, she will only pay 12% of her $1.7 million check for winning the French Open to the Chinese government instead of the 67% the government demands of the players under its control. Less regulation. Lower taxes. Improved results. If China can figure out that control coupled with low rewards don't produce the desired results, why can't Washington?

Why indeed. China sounds like Illinois. America is heading there, though we have at least one other bright spot.

Meanwhile, Obama's campaign guru thinks it's WWII:

With their hopes dashed of substantial improvement in unemployment anytime soon, aides indicated that the theme was likely to be less “morning in America” and more “don’t change horses in midstream.”

Mr. Axelrod said: “We’re not going to be putting up a ‘Mission Accomplished’ sign. Part of the message is going to be we have to see these things through.”

In an interview at his Chicago consulting offices, Mr. Axelrod repeatedly said “stability” for the middle class would be central.

Oh, wow, locked into stagnation, or worse. It's a war all right "Obama's troops...already on the ground", but we're the enemy. As Peggy Noonan notes, this president is really, really cold to those who disagree with him--which is a lot of the country these days.

Not all Americans can or will vote with their feet, but if we want America to still be America, we've got to vote this guy out.

More. Via RCP: Chinese entrepreneurs leaving China. Gordon Chang, Forbes:

  Beijing, since 2008, has been targeting private entrepreneurs and abusing them even more than usual, so it is natural they are now trying to protect themselves from a rapacious state.

Escaping crony commies. Some are coming here, some to Canada. Entrepreneurs unite! Lose the chains.

David Skeel: The Real Cost of the Auto Bailouts

...Latest wrong track poll, The Hill, voters looking ahead to where they'll be in Nov. 2012. HT Memeorandum. Will you better off? Just 25% think so. Not an Obama winning the future outlook these days.

  --crossposted at BackyardConservative

Wake up

Anemic Job Growth, More Layoffs. The Obama Economy

You break it you own it, Barack. Far below expectations: CNBC.

Chicago gas prices highest in country again.

More housing hell.

Obama on the spot today as that crack on the job Joe the Biden is overseas.

Meanwhile it's Day 760 and counting on the Dems' lack of a budget. Remarkably cynical. Yes we can.

More. We need jobs, and growth comes from small business. The GOP alternative.

"Who’s anti-intellectual, the party that designs a creative and daring plan to save entitlements while balancing the budget, or the party that responds to that idea by filming a video of a man throwing grandma off a cliff?" - RedState

--crossposted at BackyardConservative

Pawlenty Braves Iowa on Ethanol

He may lose to Michele Bachmann in the Iowa primary but kudos to Tim Pawlenty for breaking the ethanol stranglehold Iowa has had on both parties. WSJ:

"The truth about federal energy subsidies, including federal subsidies for ethanol, is that they have to be phased out," Mr. Pawlenty told a crowd in Des Moines. "We simply can't afford them anymore."


He's certainly right about that, though that hasn't stopped nearly every other candidate from deploring the federal deficit while supporting the most egregious of corporate welfare subsidies. This marks a change for Mr. Pawlenty, who over two terms leading Iowa's northern neighbor first fought farmers on subsidies but later supported their push for a 20% ethanol mandate for gasoline. But in refusing to stick to the script for candidates looking to harvest votes in February's Iowa caucuses, Mr. Pawlenty has passed an early test of fortitude. By opposing ethanol despite the political risks, Mr. Pawlenty will also gain credibility to tackle other energy subsidies that drain the federal fisc to little good effect.

His ad was a winner and he's building on that.

More. Examiner pro and con here.

Lake Country

But will anyone actually vote for the guy in the primaries?

No, I'm not talking Romney who I wish would go away, or Gingrich who is now TOTAL TOAST, but Mitch Daniels.

He's the one looking good on paper as a president before he decides to explore a run but I have this uneasy feeling he's kind of tone deaf and too low key. Well, we shall see.

This latest judicial decision in Indiana won't help his already low poll numbers either.

I look forward to the debates and some fireworks before the winter caucus in Iowa.

And we may have some late entrants--it's a wide open race:)

As Rush says, Dems will tell us who they fear.

P.S. HotAir poll.

  --crossposted at BackyardConservative