Shot in the Dark

Category: Campaign ’08

  • Pretense Aside

    SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting in line at the Rack Shack on South Robert.   Stephanie Marie ANNAN – Community organizer for the 5th CD Libertarian Party – enters with a great clatter, vigorously stomps off her boots, and gets in line, finally noticing BERG.  ANNAN:  Hey, Merg!  I don’t like all that stuff you’ve…

  • Unsportsmanlike Conduct

    Chris Kluwe potentially kicks open a Pandora’s Box. Given Chris Kluwe’s love of role-playing board games, it shouldn’t surprise that his latest actions have more angles than 23-sided dice. On Tuesday, former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe was demanding that the team, through the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P, release the six-month…

  • Footloose

    The most famous (or is it infamous?) punter in modern history tries to pin the Minnesota Vikings against their end zone. Well, in his defense, he no longer has a job to be so focused on. Chris Kluwe may possess a number of less-than-desirable qualities, but the former punter’s media savvy remains arguably his strongest…

  • Hard To Believe It Was Four Years Ago

    Chad the Elder takes us down memory lane, back to four years ago, when his night of the RNC got washed out by a passing hurricane. And it led me through my own little set of flashblacks- all the time I spent covering the convention in my city back then, and the unruly guests we had. Good…

  • Tantrum

    “Occupy Minnesota” “protesters” disrupt a Henco Commission meeting by… …well, basically, kicking their feet and sputtering like spoiled four-year-olds. The footage above is by Bill Sorum at “The Uptake”, the lefty astroturf vidblog.  Sorum writes hilariously: Since the occupation began on October 7, there have been a number of attempts to remove the protestors from…

  • The Facts, For Those Who Want Them

    The unedited video of the fifteen minutes leading up to the UC-Davis pepper-spraying incident. It’s about fifteen minutes, and not fantastic quality…: …because, let’s face it, ubiquitous electronics aren’t always a blessing. But it sort of turns the media’s and “Occupy Movement’s” (pardon the redundancy) narrative about the incident on its head…

  • I Have A Hunch…

    …that while  Obama has aggressively flirted, to the point of tongue-kissing, with the “Occupy” “movement” since day 1, and the media has been fluffing the “grassroots” “uprising” more aggressively than an up-and-coming production assistant on a pr0no shoot… …that those days are over. Friendly wager:  Once the “Occupy” “novement” turn on Obama, they disappear from the news.…

  • “The Administration Has Never Supported “Occupy”, Winston”

    John Nolte notes that  the media is frantically backing and filling and trying to remove all record that the Obama administration ever supported the “Occupy” movement: Two months ago, the White House, Democrats, and the MSM were all sure that the #OccupyWallStreet movement would save them in 2012. With thousands of astro-turfed morons in the streets…

  • America: “Occuwhat?”

    The “Occupy” movment is drawing a big “meh” from the “American Street”:. [A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll] finds that 56% of Americans surveyed are neither supporters nor opponents and 59% say they don’t know enough to have an opinion about the movement’s goals. The survey, however, does show an increase from 20% to 31% in disapproval of…

  • Auditions

    The Occupy movement is still looking for the big moment that the media – who are still largely sympathetic – can flog into an epochal, or at least society-altering, event.  It’s called a “Kent State Moment” – which, as Zombie at Pajamas Media notes…: …when modern liberal pundits wish for an OWS “Kent State moment,”…

  • This Is Occupy

    The first five minutes of this video – by Sally Zelikovsky and Steve Kemp of TeaPartyTelevision – almost looks like OccupyMN; placid enough, but with a lot of flowery semiliterate arrested-adolescent rhetoric (“It looks like the rich don’t want to give it up, so we’re going to have to take it”). The last five minutes –…

  • The Gang That Couldn’t Protest Straight

    I know that I’ve pretty much given up trying to keep up with all the stories of the violence and depravity at the various “Occupy” sites around the country over at my “Climate Of Hate” page; there’s just been too much for what is supposed to be a series of capsule summaries of individual events.…

  • An Experiment

    While at the “Occupy Minnesota” “rally” over the weekend, I saw a few signs saying that “Labor Creates Wealth”. Now, I’ve got nothing against labor.  I work for a living; without someone to build things to sell, capital and management will be more or less out to dry. But does labor create wealth? For those of…

  • Just Good Neighbors

    Joe Doakes from Como Park writes that the group “occupying” the square at Henco Gov’t Center tomorrow will be running rampant: Well, not rampant. The County will provide portable toilets and bike racks. Alcohol is banned, smoking is allowed on sidewalks only, tents are still being negotiated. These people fancy themselves the heirs to Kent…

  • Avalanche Of Depravity

    You’ve probably already heard this; in the wake of the emailed death threat to Republican senators last week, someone has sent conservative blogger Ann Althouse a threat, presented here in its vulgar entirety (emphasis added by me): “We will picket on public property as close to your house as we can every day. We will…

  • Do You Remember?

    Two years ago, a small number of Tea Partiers carried guns to the rallies. In every single example, the owners followed applicable state laws; they either had permits for open-carry, or were in states that didn’t restrict open carry of handguns and/or long arms, whichever were applicable. And for all of the left’s barbering on…

  • Demented

    Ann Althouse notes that some of the protesters are starting to lose it: I see some people descending into irrationality — beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders. Meade was at a demonstration, photographing it. A demonstration is — to a clear-thinking person — a collection of people asking to be seen, wanting…

  • Weigel Misses The Point

    David “JournoList” Weigel, writing at Slate, wonders “Where Are the Thugs?“. Michelle Malkin promises to do “the reporting the Tea Party-bashing national media won’t do on the rabid outbreak of progressive incivility and violence at Big Labor protests across the country.” Sounds promising! But here’s what she delivers. – Protesters call Scott Walker a “Koch whore.”…

  • Double Standard

    Remember last year, when the regional media furrowed its stately brow and pondered whether the Tea Party was “racist”… …because of an ambiguous sign? Apparently the media isn’t curious about mass movements any more, since conservative bloggers have been documenting enough reprehensible, repulsive signage in Madison to re-side every shanty in Port-Au-Prince. Here’s the latest,…

  • Dear Wisconsin Tea Partiers

    Bring video cameras.  Lots of them.  And don’t interact with a “union” protester without at least one camera on you. Because yesterday, the unions and the other organizations leading the protests were warning their members “not to be provoked” by the Tea Party counterprotesters. And you know Berg’s Seventh Law: Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal…

  • The Great Poll Scam: Introduction

    The weekend before the election, I was talking with a friend – a woman who has become a newly-minted conservative in the past two years.  She’d sat out the 2008 election, and had voted for Kerry in ’04, but finally became alarmed about the state of this nation’s future – she’s got kids – and…

  • They Know What Matters

    The state deficit is zooming out of control. Two of the three gubernatorial candidates have no idea how they’re going to fix it; they’re a step or two shy of hosting a contest looking for ideas. The DFL, which has controlled the legislature for the past four years and dominated it completely for two, has…

  • Coverage

    I’m mildly shocked to see the same pack of peace creeps that led the bedlam about the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul is leaping into action now that Minneapolis is on the short list for the 2012 Democratic National Convention: About 20 protesters chanted and toted placards on Sunday near Target Field, hoping to send…

  • Newsweek: “Go to your room, voters!”

    I started out my “adult” life, at least to about halfway through college, as a liberal. But starting in high school, I had doubts; the Dems were a disaster on national security; the economy was falling apart; I started to have doubts that “giving everything to everyone” was anything more than a good campaign promise…

  • Obama Girl Gets It

    …and she wasn’t popularized for her intellect…if you know what I mean. Ettinger, 28, said that even though she doesn’t have health care — “I can’t afford it” — she still thinks Obama should have waited to tackle the thorny legislation that has been blamed for the devastat ing Democratic loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate…