Mene Mene Tekel Polling-in

While it’s always worth casting a cold eye on polling numbers, it’s striking how poorly the Leader of the Free World is doing these days across the board. Real Clear Politics has the numbers and they aren’t pretty:

RCP Average                            12/17 – 1/11 —           41.9               53.1               -11.2
Quinnipiac                                 1/7 – 1/10 1178 RV    35                  54                  -19
Politico/Morning Consult           1/8 – 1/9 2000 RV      44                  53                  -9
Rasmussen Reports                 1/9 – 1/11 1500 LV     40                  58                  -18
Economist/YouGov                   1/8 – 1/11 1258 RV     45                 51                   -6
IBD/TIPP                                   1/5 – 1/8 1308 A         44                 45                   -1
Reuters/Ipsos                            1/5 – 1/6 1000 A         45                 51                   -6
Economist/YouGov                    1/2 – 1/4 1201 RV      43                 51                   -8

It’s one thing if Rasmussen, a pollster generally favorable to the GOP, posts ugly numbers for Joe Biden. What’s truly eye-opening are the results from Quinnipiac, a poll historically gentle with the portsiders. If their numbers are accurate, Biden’s disapproval rating is a whopping -19, and that’s from a poll conducted after the recent Pelosi-produced passion play of 1/6.

So what are the larger implications? A few thoughts:

  • If you’re Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, do you fear the political wrath of the leader of your party? Apostasy has rarely been safer.
  • If you’re Xi or Putin, do you concern yourself with anything Joe Biden says? Or, for that matter, with anything he does? I doubt the citizenry of Ukraine or Taiwan is particularly sanguine at the moment.
  • If you’re Mitch McConnell, do you sleep well? Never better, I would guess, and certainly better than your average Ukranian.
  • If you’re Stacey Abrams, do you see any value in hanging with Grandpa Joe?

While there’s certainly entertainment value in watching Uncle Joe moving kinda slow, we’re not headed for Petticoat Junction at the moment.

In Case You Need Another Reason To Hate NPR

77 years ago last month, World War II went into a brief run of extra innings, as German troops launched a surprise attack, trying to drive a wedge between the US and British armies and take the port of Antwerp, robbing the Allies of their main logistics hub on the continent. We know it as the “Battle of the Bulge”.

In a strategic sense, the attack was doomed before it started. It may have cost the Germans more than it ganed them, burning through their last supplies of fuel, ammunition and fresh vehicles, to no gain that they were able to hold for more than a month.

But that was little comfort to the GIs on the ground – many new to the front in brand-new divisions, many more exhausted after six months of constant battle and resting in the “quiet sector” of the Ardennes, and the corner of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.

The GIs fought on – some of them famously surrounded, others who just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time, still more who rushed to the scene to hold lines in the snow that could not be passed.

They fought an enemy that was exhausted and morally shaped by five years of total war, including troops – the Waffen SS, who had made war crimes part of their “mystique” since the fall of 1939. One SS battlegroup had left a trail of war crimes, including the massacre of a group of combat engineers at Malmédy, Belgiuim, and a smaller and more obscure but perhaps even more gruesome slaughter of African-American troops at Wereth – two of a number of real shootings of American POWs, and dozens more rumored mass killings.

It’s no secret to those who read military history; at times, after hearing news about the GIs gunned down at Malmédy in particular, that GIs – cold, often cut off from higher authority, thousands of miles from home, fighting for people they largely didn’t understand, in a war none of them asked for – took rough revenge. The history of “The Good War” is not void of stories of American troops gunning down Germans, and especially Japanese, without worrying too hard about the rules of war. Americans and Brits were less likely to throw the rules of war under the treads of the passing tank than the Russians or French – all of whom took “take no prisoners” pretty literally – but war, being famously “hell”, brings the worst out of everyone at times.

Suffice to say – while the typical 18 year old American draftee was on balance, as Stephen Ambrose called him, “the. best thing that could have happened to a conquered Germany or liberated France, Luixembourg and Belgium”, some of them, sometimes, had their breaking points. It wasn’t taught in high school history class – which, when I was in school, was still being taught by some of the men who’d been there – but you don’t have to dig too far into history to find honest portrayals by GIs who, as the years rolled on, talked it out (including at least one infamous episode from Band of Brothers itself).

It’s not news, suffice to say.

If you read your history.

But this is 2022. And most Americans, including most of today’s generation of “news” reporters, never read history, or at least nothing before 1960.

“The Reveal” is an NPR ‘Investigative journalism’ program, hosted by Al Letson. This past Sunday’s episode focused on the groundbreaking investigation of a massacre of 80 German POWs in Belgium by members of the 11th Armored Division.

I listened so you don’t have to – but here it is, anyway:

So what’s. the purpose of this “investigation?”

To prove that World War II a reductionist battle between good-hearted, white-hatted GIs and cartoony black-hearted Nazis, and that some Americans did some horrible things?

Again – it’s not news.

To bring out a story that has been hidden by history?

As the story itself points out, the episode was common knowledge among people who follow the war.

That George Patton and other Army brass, at the time and during the telling of the story of the war, found it expedient to either “not publicize” or “cover up” the details of the massacre, to a people who were becoming weary of war and who were shocked by the late-campaign bloodshed? Leaving aside the whole “what the hell do they expect?” angle – who do they expect to hold accountable? 95% of the GIs are gone; all the senior officers who set the policy had passed on forty years ago.

To undercut and sandbag a key part of the American self-image? To throw crap on the notion that America has had, and acted upon, and sacrificed mightilly, for noble ideals that didn’t strictly benefit us? To liberate people we had no moral obligation to sacrifice for?

I think I’m getting warm.

A former teacher, who has drifted far to the left since I was a student, once said “the Walt Disney version of history doesn’t tell the whole story” – to which I replied “either does the Ingmar Bergman version (I suppose I could have said NIkole Hannah-Jones, as well).

Either way – when it comes to piddling on any shred of American exceptionaism, to say nothing of nobility, there is no statute of limitations.

It’s The Cover-up

Earlier this week, we noted that an anonymous Hennepin county official had ordered an investigation of journalist Rebecca Brannon, who is just about the only reporter in the Twin Cities to be actively asking questions about the incident a few weeks back with sheriff Hutchinson..

Thanks to the Medina Police Department, they are apparently no longer anonymous:

So why did the Medina police decide to give up the identity of the Hennepin county official who had brought the cops sniffing after Brannon and, oddly, her parents?

Maybe somebody realizes there’s a first amendment lawsuit just waiting to happen here, and ashes need to be covered?

Reminder: I will be talking with Brannon this Saturday at 2 o’clock on the Northern Alliance.

So – will the Twin Cities main stream media, stenographers though they largely are, be shamed into actually covering the story, finally?

Priorities

It seems the relentless watchdogs of government in the Twin Cities media are at loggerheads with the government over the Hutchinson case:

You might say that I’m a dreamer – but I remember news media that’d take government to court to get to the bottom of a story like this.

Provided they’re not a DFLer, I guess.

UPDATE: It gets worse. More at noon.

ADHD

A friend of the blog emails:

The Waukesha parade killer?

The MSP Terminal 2 brawlers?

The Miami high rise collapse?

Americans left in Afghanistan?

Alec Baldwin gun accident on the movie set?

And the list goes on…

Does the media have the short attention span or is it us?

(Redacted)

Not to mention Andrew Cuomo’s concurrent slaughter of senior citizens and sex crimes, Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her brother and her spouses gravy train from her campaign funds, Umbrella Man, Jacob Frey siccing “Anti”-Fa on Trump supporters, Keith Ellison’s domestic abuse allegations, hundreds of millions of dollars defrauded from Minnesota health and human services on the DFL‘s watch, Mark Dayton‘s disappearance from the office for months at a time…

Yeah, it’s got to be us citizens.

Hypothetically Speaking

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails about a story I’ve been wanting to touch on all week:

You know those “Good Guy with a gun” stories that Liberals scoff at as Sexist White Supremacists Compensating for Something?

This Edina woman isn’t scoffing.

If only there were some way society could assume responsibility for protecting the public from violent criminals, some group of armed public servants sworn to uphold the law so that private citizens don’t have to.

Joe Doakes

Of course, the “good guy with a gun“ angle got buried so deeply, it’s a good thing the fact didn’t need oxygen.

You’ll never get our opinion class to admit it, but it was the good guy with the gun that saved the situation.

Everything’s A Wedge

According to Dana Milbank…

…dissenting from Big Left/Big Media/the Brandon administration is “fascism”..

Not sure if they’re trying to foment a civil war.

If they were, what would they be doing differently?

(And how is the Brandon Administration “salvaging democratic norms?” Labeling everyone that disagrees a “white supremacist?”)

Diagosis: Malpractice

My blogfather from nearly 20 years ago, Andrew Sullivan, on the many, many ways modern media fails Democracy in its slavish service to the left’s narrative.

It’s hard to come up with a single pullquote, but I’ll run with this:

I still rely on the MSM for so much. I still read the NYT first thing in the morning. I don’t want to feel as if everything I read is basically tilted through wish-fulfillment, narrative-proving, and ideology. But with this kind of record, how can I not? 

We need facts and objectivity more than ever. Trump showed that. What we got in the MSM was an over-reaction, a reflexive overreach to make the news fit the broader political fight. This is humanly understandable. It is professionally unacceptable. And someone has got to stop it.

I have a hunch most Americans won’t know the value of a conscientiously neutral media until the inevitable results of the lack of one become truly apparent…

…more than they are.

No News Is Acceptable News

SCENE: Mitch BERG is having a cocktail at a downtown Saint Paul bar when MyLyssa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, happens in.

SILBERMAN: Merg…

BERG: Er, hey, MyLyssa…

SILBERMAN: Last week, Kyle Rittenhouse was aquitted of domestic terrorism for shooting up a Black Lives Matter rally.

BERG: You got one fact correct in that sentence, so I guess that’s a start.

SILBERMAN: What if that would have been a black man? Leaving aside the fact that he’d be dead right now, for a moment, what would all of you white male gun owners be saying about it? Would your reaction be any different?

BERG: Funny you mentioned that. Last week – the same day of the RIttenhouse verdict, in fact – Andrew Coffee IV was acquitted of murder, and attempted murder of police, when he shot at a no-knock raid on his house. No cops were killed, but Coffee was up for homicide in the death of his girlfriend was shot 10 times by a SWAT team. He was acquitted, for exactly the same reasons Rittenhouse was. He was a felon with a gun, so he might get some time for that, but he had nearly exactly the same self-defense case as Rittenhouse.

And we started finally getting some details about the acquittal of Jaleel Stallings, who returned fire at cops who were firing rubber bullets from a van without announcing their presence; Stallings fired back until the cops identified themselves (and beat the crap out of him), and got acquitted – again, for exactly the same reasons that Rittenhouse was.

Both were in reasonable fear of immediate death. Both used appropriate force. Both met their states self-defense rules. Both were acquitted.

And gun owners – presumably including many of us “white males” – supported them, as the facts got out, in their self-defense claims – albeit not necessarily Coffee’s having his illegal gun…

SILBERMAN: Mitch, Mitch, you’re missing my point.

BERG: Which is…?

SILBRERMAN: I asked if you white male gun owners would support a black man with a gun defending himself.

BERG: And I gave you two where the answer was “yes”,and that major media seemed to avoid covering. Including NPR.

SILBERMAN: You gave me concrete examples. I asked an abstract question. Please give me an astract answer…

BERG: Yes, we would and do…

SILBERMAN: …that confirms my prejudices.

And SCENE.

Faith Noah More

NOTE: This blog’s editing tool, “Word Press”, just keeps getting worse and worse. It ate the lede, literally, for this piece. We’ll try again.

I’ll cop to a certain amount of Schedenfreud, watching the array of reliably “progressive” and utterly un-funny late-night talk shows sinking beneath Greg Gutfeld.

Four years of Donald Trump made conventional late-night “comedy” indolent and lazy. Writers – many of them not very funny to begin with – seemed to think anything with Trump in the punch line would earn ’em a laugh. The “A-list” “talent” hosting these affairs – dismal talking heads like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, whose careers peaked at parodying “Red” media and watching women jumping on trampolines, respectively – aren’t helping much.

And few stories of of this decline make me happier than Trevor Noah’s Daily Show, which traded the (relative) wit and charm of Jon Stewart for…

…well, Trevor Noah. I’d normally tell a joke at this point at Noah’s expense, but it seems fitting to remain un-funny.

And between a lame host and “writing” that can’t quite find, well, any traction in any way, the Daily Show is sinking fast.

The “Daily Show” host is as reliably progressive as his peers, although he occasionally will smite his own side (at least far more than Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel). Still, his show’s most recent ratings snapshot isn’t bad

It’s abysmal

“Abysmal” may be charitable:

#Shrug.

How bad has it gotten?

Noah has sunk below the unctuous, priggish John Oliver. Below the hapless and abysmal Samantha Bee. Ahead of the pointless, Colbert-produced “Charlemagne Tha God”, and nothing more.

Will Hollywood learn?

It’s been 30 years, and newspapers still haven’t.

Dereliction Of “Duty”

And to think some say the “elite” media is utterly delusional:

I mean, I get the theory – it’s not quite the puffery it appears to be at first glance. A media that conscientiously checks and balances government is, in fact, vital – not only to democracy, but to the functioning of a free society.

Quick example: In the history of the world, there has never been a famine in a place with both a relatively free economy and a relatively free press; the market evens out the economic distortion, and a free-ish media allays the panic-hoarding and the corruption, that are behind most modern famines.

Now – looking at the shortages creeping up around us today, do you think our media could be doing a better job of reporting on the causes?

As opposed to puffing up the Administration -and themselves?

Game On

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals says — no mandate for you:

A federal appeals court has upheld its stay on President Biden’s vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with at least 100 employees.

In a 22-page ruling on Friday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the mandate was “fatally flawed,” and barred the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from enforcing the mandate “pending adequate judicial review” of a motion for permanent injunction.

OSHA shall “take no steps to implement or enforce the mandate until further court order,” the ruling stated.

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The mandate, which was supposed to take effect Jan. 4, requires business with at least 100 employees to mandate their workers get vaccinated or undergo frequent testing.

Two predictions:

  • Biden and co. will ignore the court ruling; and
  • The chorus of MSM scolds will try to justify whatever Biden does. Constitutional crises are so 2020, doncha know.

 

I Shouted Out Who Killed Joseph Rosenbaum, When After All, It Was You And Me

The Kyle Rittenhouse case – involved in jury instrucitons today, and going to final attorney summations today – is plenty complicated, but about some fairly simple questions:

  • Did Rittenhouse instigate or participate in instigating two different deadly-force incidents in which he used lethal force on four people, with two dead, one seriously injured, and one missed (who has disappeared from public view)?
  • Was his fear of death or great bodily harm reasonable?
  • Was the threat to his life immediate?
  • Was his response reasonable – enough to end the attack on him?
  • DId he make a reasonable effort under the circumstances to disengage?

Proving or disproving those five points for two incidents and four shootings has taken eight days of testimony and over a year of pre-trial wrangling – all very complicated – but the questions themselves are fairly simple.

But as far as the media and the large culture are concerned, this trial isn’t really about the facts of the case.

This case is about America’s tribes – the “four Americas” that George Packer talked about last summer – projecting their views of each other onto each other via a teenager who jumped into the deep end of the pool head-first.

Smart” America, the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton crowd, see in Rittenhouse the bitter gun-clinging Jeezuz freak they picture that other tribe of Americans being; they earnestly exclaim “Nobody needs a gun like that” (ignoring the fact that four people tried to kill him). They think Rittenhoue is an intellectual symbol of all they detest about that other America. This includes most, but not all, media coverage; Big Media has cast its lot with “Just America”, and it shows in much of the coverage.

Real” America seems. him as a lone sentinel of freedom, fighting back against the (politically favored, socially immunized) mob that is ravaging our centers of thought and commerce (and Kenosha). A kid from bedrock America, good and true, a bone to be chewed by a “blue” culture and media (ptr) who are siding with the rioters

“Free” America sees this as another show trial, like Bernard Goetz, a symbol of a state run amok that is actively crushing liberty.

“Just” America, naturally, sees Rittenhouse, the person and the case, as a symptom of “white supremacy” and the base, violent nature of the army of straw cis-men they face.

Indeed, with few exceptions, the higher the social status of the person commenting on Rittenhouse, the less their commentary actually has to do with the shootings in Kenosha or the facts at trial.

Everyone and everything in our society today is a metaphor, it seems.

In The Bag

This blog was founded primarily to lend my small, relatively insignificant voice to pointing out the growing bias and ethical turpitude the mainstream media.

That was in 2002 – a much more innocent time, relatively speaking.

As we’ve documented the proceedings in the Rittenhouse trial, I’ve noted the scabrous, depraved slant in the coverage.

Someone actually put ’em in the same place:

Local media is no better; most ran headlines similar to the above during Monday’s proceedings – only Channel 11 made a quick headline reference to the fact that Grosskreutz incriminated himself and upheld Rittenhouses self-defense claim against him (without saying it in as many words, naturallly).

Public media? NPR and MPR this morning ran a report from Wisconsin Public Radio about yesterday’s proceedings that focused on a dispute over whether the owner of the used car lot where the incident started did or did not pay, or even ask, civilians to provide security – which will have no impact on the verdict, other than perhaps gulling any potentially dim jurors…

…and ignored the county Medical Examiner and photographer Nathan DeBruin, who largely upheld Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim.

I tend to give people the benefit of a doubt. Reporters aren’t largely lawyers. Many of them aren’t curious enough to go much past the press releases that seem to make up so much of one’s morning newscast.

But this goes way past ignorance, and given the amount of reliable information that is available, incompetence as well.

They are pushing a narrative; protesters good, protests mostly peaceful, resistance entirely depraved and motivated by white supremacy.

To the narrative, the battle is a reductionist cartoon with white hats on one side and MAGA caps on the other, counting on news consumers to be too dim to know the difference.

As the 2020 elections, the California recount, and the recent election in Austin Texas show, its not wrong.

Just So We’re Clear…

…I’m pretty sure the Secretary of Transportation is one of the Cabinet offices, like Education and Energy, that we could get rid of tomorrow and nobody would notice.

But with that said:

If Trump were still president, and Elaine Chao were sitting on the sidelines during a national crisis squarely involving (for better or worse) her corner of the bureaucracy, I’m pretty sure we’d be hearing about it.

By the way – during the nomination process, it seemed Buttigieg’s main qualification was that he was kind of a train geek as a kid. Too bad he wasn’t a ship geek, like me (and most rural North Dakotans).

From The “Things Only Idiots Didn’t Know” Files

Even liberal Democrats are figuring out the “Moderate Joe Biden” image was a bill of goods. A canard. A gull for the gullible.

Baked wind.

…when Cillizza, of all people, devotes a column to “the utter radicalness of Joe Biden’s presidency,” maybe it’s time to acknowledge that Biden is trying to implement extremist policies considerably outside the mainstream. Biden’s initiatives, writes Cillizza, amount to a “massive outlay of federal spending” that “will add massive sums to the federal budget deficit.”

Of course, Cilizza was one of the people behind building the myth in the first place – meaning he’s either a PR flack or an idiot.

I Don’t Believe In Karma…

…but I believe what goes around, comes around.

Dr. Ana Navaro, celebrity physician of sorts, spends months wishing ghastly ill on the unvaccinated.

Dr. Ana Navaro on The View, last week:

Hope she gets better soon.

And yes, that means I am a better person than her.

Coattails

A “Minnesota” Poll – which ,as we’ve noted in the past, has historically favored Democrats, sometimes to an absurd extent with deeply suspicious and one-sided patterns, even after numerous reboots and changes in management and pollsters – shows Governor Walz under water:

The crosstabs are even more ominous for Walz, and show President Biden to be a bit of a drag down-ticket.

Fearless predictions:

  • The Strib, Channels 4, 9 and 11, and the rest of the media will switch into full PR mode for the DFL for the next 13 months. Indeed, they have; Esme Murphy’s interview with Jennifer Carnahan – complete with the sort of on-air toenail-painting she normally reserves for DFLers – can be seen as nothing but an attempt to keep the MNGOP even more divided and impotent than normal.
  • MPR will be a little more artful about it – but the output from the DFL’s opposition research will get prominent placement.
  • And a quick reminder to Tom Hauser, perhaps the only genuinely detached journalist in Twin Cities TV or print news: drapes don’t have shoes.

I’m going to put a pin in this.

Selective

Iowa governor Kim Reynolds’s approval rating has been moving up well into positive territory.

Current polls in the Des Moines register show 53% of Iowans approve of her job, while 43 do not – which, at +10, pretty decent ratio in this very polarized society.

The article in the Des Moines Register is actually fairly comprehensive about reporting the story.

With one exception.

Go ahead, read it.

In what paragraph this very favorable story is the governors party mentioned?

Answer below the jump.

Continue reading

Well, Lookie Here

Rep. Matt Gaetz exonerated of allegations of sex trafficking.

He was the victim of an extortion attempt:

Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz has been exonerated after 62-year-old Stephen Alford was recently indicted by the Department of Justice for extortion.

“Stephen M. Alford did knowingly and willfully devise, and intent to devise, a scheme to defraud and for obtaining money and property by means of material false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and for the promise of executing such scheme, did cause, and attempt to cause, a wire communication to be transmitted in interstate commerce,” the indictment states.

So, all you Democrats in the comment section (you know who you are) who were measuring the drapes in a Supermax cell for Gaetz? Anything to say?

By the way – Rep. Gaetz’s father, Don…

…was a student of my father’s, back in Rugby, ND, back when I was a toddler.

I’m not gonna claim it gives me absolute moral authority or anything.

Surprising Nobody

This blog has accepted as a truism that a functioning representative democracy needs institutions that The People can trust – law enforcement, the judiciary, and the news media – to keep all the other institutions accountable, and thus allowing the democracy to survive.

So in a sense the fact that National Public Radio is beginning to drop the pretense of “objectivity” might almost be seen as good news:

According to the new guidelines:

NPR editorial staff may express support for democratic, civic values that are core to NPR’s work, such as, but not limited to: the freedom and dignity of human beings, the rights of a free and independent press, the right to thrive in society without facing discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, disability, or religion.

NPR’s public editor, Kelly McBride, explains that the guidelines allow journalists to participate in such causes as Black Lives Matter demonstrations or Pride parades, though they have to discuss specifics with their supervisors.

But not – one recalls when listening to Lulu Garcia Navarro plunking generous helpings of her point of view into her “Journalism” – the audience.