Category Archives: Blogs

Blogging about blogs. Kinda like raising a toast to whiskey.

Bearish On The Bird

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Is Doug Kass right about the stock market?

Who knows?  I mean, given the almost-unanimous pollyannaism that’s broken out in the parts of the financial media that get quoted on the MSM, I’d suspect contrarians are right just based on knee-jerk hunchism. 

But when it comes to Twitter, I think he’s got a point; Kass is giving up on the popular social media site:

“Unfortunately, there are many haters in the social blogosphere, who, perhaps because of their own issues, drown out the many good people who want a value-added investment experience by learning more and enjoying a healthy dialogue in real time.”

Twitter has become dominated by people whoarewhat Laura Billings warned bloggers were a decade ago; a combination of raving loners and paid human (give or take) copy-and-paste-bots who clog all discussion with ranting or recirculated drivel. 

“Unfortunately, there are many haters in the social blogosphere, who, perhaps because of their own issues, drown out the many good people who want a value-added investment experience by learning more and enjoying a healthy dialogue in real time.”

Time for a companion book to James Surowiecki’s huge hit of about eight years ago;The Idiocy Of Crowds.

Hard To Believe This Slipped Past

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Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

From the March 19, 2013 Pioneer Press article on Democrats’ e-bingo gamble,

“As of late February, budget planners were forecasting about $1.8 million in tax revenue from charitable gambling in fiscal year 2013 for use on the stadium. Estimates last fall had been about $15 million higher, Massman said.”

Democrats planned to bring in $15 million to pay for the Vikings stadium, but we’re bringing in less than $2 million? What a blunder!

Who could have foreseen it?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Oh, don’t be silly.  Blogs don’t cover news.

The Fix Is In

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The Fix’s Chris Cilizza’s annual poll of the best political blogs by state has given this blog a bit of a jolt of levity over the years – 2009 and 2011, anyway.  And the latest list is out.

I know, the suspense was killing you.

This years’, however, seems to be less a paroxysm of lefty fanboy turnout than previous years.  Cilizza’s list:

Well, I’m happy and thankful for the recognition for True North.  It helps make up for the fact that TN’s staff – especially Nancy LaRoche and Derek Brigham – put in a lot of hard work for not a whole lot of payback.

One can’t begrudge Eric Ostermeier his position, of course.  And the poll seems to recognize, as many of us do, that Sally Jo Sorenson of BSP is one of few Minnesota leftybloggers who doesn’t seem to need either police surveillance or court-ordered medication.

Berg’s Seventh Law In Action, Part MMMCCXIX

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Republican “xeroxes” a bill:  Leftymedia chants indignantly.

Democrat not only copies and pastes a bill from a special interest group, but allows that special interest’s registered lobbyist to sit in in the role of a legislator to introduce and read the bill into the record?

{crickets}

Berg’s Seventh Law may be the single most prescient thing I’ve ever written.

Let’s Try This Again

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To:  Dog Gone, Chanting Point Congruency Analyst, “Penigma”
From:  M Berg, overly patient guy
Re:  ”Crap Legislation”

Ms. Gone,

Last  legislative session, in the wake of Governor Messinger Dayton  vetoing the “Stand Your Ground” Bill – which had just been passed by a bipartisan majority of legislators – you insisted volubly that the bill was “crap legislation”.

When asked repeatedly to please elaborate with details as to exactly how the bill – which, I remind you, was passed with a convincing bipartisan majority, and was largely identical to similar laws that have been roundly successful nationwide – was “crap”, you begged off due to time commitments.

Fair enough.

But you’ve not only found time since then to…

So enough equivocating, dodging, and smoke-screening.  Why, exactly, was Cornish’s bill “crap?”  Please be specific; attempt to submit actual facts that logically connect to a thesis, so we can debate the issue. 

I don’t think you can.  I think you were reciting the chanting points the left put out on the subject – which I have spent years patiently, laboriously, factually and completely debunking on this blog, and will no doubt do again after 2014 – and you don’t really understand the issue.  In fact, if I were a gambling man, I’d bet serious bank on it.

But by all means go to it!

That is all!

Meet The Two-Stage Snowblower Of Logic And Analysis

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Last week, I addressed a Dave Mindeman post about the DFL whose highlight was Mindeman saying, essentially, “the beatings will continue until morale improves, and you’ll like it!”.

Well, no – his idea was the business has nothing to fear from DFL hegemony in the state.  We can debate that – indeed, we will – but in fact the bulk of my critique had more to do with his claim that business does better when Democrats are in charge. It’s just not true.

Mindeman responded last week with a post entitled, presumably with no irony intended, “Answering Mitch Berg with a Blizzard of Facts“.

The “unintended irony” bit is because most of the flakes in his “blizzard” that aren’t utterly irrelevant or non-sequiturs reinforce my point, and undercut his and, more importantly, the DFL’s and the lefty establishment’s (for whom Mindeman is a reliable crier).

Example:  He pointed out the liberal meme that “the economy does better when Democrats are in the White House”.  I responded that while that is “true”, it’s also dependent on macroeconomic context that goes way beyond the sitting President’s party.  Here – check that part out for yourself:

So when Mindeman writes…:

1. According to McGraw-Hill’s S&P Capital IQ, the S&P 500 has rallied an average of 12.1% per year since 1901 when Democrats occupy the White House, compared with just 5.1% for the GOP.

2. Gross domestic product has increased 4.2% each year since 1949 when Democrats run the executive branch, versus 2.6% under Republicans.

3. S&P 500 GAAP earnings per share climbed a median of 10.5% per year since 1936 during Democratic administrations, besting an 8.9% median advance under Republicans, S&P said.

Again, as I pointed out, there was more to it than just the “D” or the “R” attached to the guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  The “Blizzard of Fact” completely dodges the important part – all that inconvenient context.  It merely piles data together to repeat a flawed thesis.

(And data from before 1933 is both irrelevant – the economy was fundamentally different before The New Deal – and a bit of a red herring, since there really was only one Democrat president between 1901 and 1933, the loathsome Woodrow Wilson, whose economy “benefitted” from massive wartime deficit spending).

Mindeman seems to have learned “fact checking” from the “Dog Gone” liberal obedience school: Google some figures, print ‘em, and huff derisively at the fools one must suffer.  To be fair, it’s all one needs among leftybloggers.

But Dave’s not at the 331 Club anymore.  He goes on:

And just in case Mr. Berg wants to highlight Obama’s tenure….

A. Corporate profits have surged an average of 51.8% under Obama, the best out of any stretch of party control since 1933, S&P said.

Sounds good, right?

Except it’s not because business is banging along on eight cylinders.  It’s because businesses are sitting on their cash.  They’re laying off workers, and outsourcing jobs.  They are not investing in new plants, new products and new hires.

Mindeman’s factoid seems to support his thesis – but if you look at the context behind the figure, you find it supports mine.

B. The S&P 500 has also climbed an average of 12.3% each year since Obama’s inauguration, far outpacing the 3.3% mean return for his predecessor.

Asked and answered.  Businesses are sitting on cash. As noted over and over by pundits on both sides of the aisle, they took the bailout money and put it into CDs.  They’re outsourcing.  They’re getting leaner, and buckling in for a rough ride.  They are not expanding; they are sitting tight, tightening payrolls, paring back expenses, blowing out inventory.

That translates into booming profits – but not because business is healthy, thriving and growing.  Or has Mr. Mindeman not noticed the unemployment rate?

And just in case you question my sources… they all come from Fox Business News…an analysis from September 4, 2012.

Well, that’s great.

Unfortunately, they do nothing to change the fact that Mindeman’s thesis – that economies do better, historically, under Democrats than Republicans, is only true on the  most superficial level possible – a correlation between numbers and dates that ignores causation.  And, notwithstanding the unearned condescension…:

But facts never settle anything for conservatives.

…still ignores it.

Note to Dave Mindeman; your “blizzard” did nothing to address any of the historical or macroeconomic context behind the numbers; the fact that from 1945 to 1970, we were the world’s only functional export economy; the fact that some of the greatest shocks to the economy happened to occur during GOP administrations – the 1953 and 1958 Recessions, the Oil Embargo, Reagan’s sweating out of stagflation, the transition after the Cold War, the Dotbomb and 9/11 recession, the Subprime Mortgage collapse, none of which (except the 1982 constriction) had anything to do with Republican policy, or indeed, presidential politics of any stripe.

It was less a “blizzard” than a drizzle of non-sequiturs; a rhetorical version of yelling “pay no attention to the history behind that curtain!”.

And saying “conservatives aren’t convinced by facts” is a cozy bit of name-calling – but the fact (!) is, facts without analysis and context are just…well, snow.

———-

I don’t mean to be too hard on Mindeman.  He’s one of the small cadre of Twin Cities’ leftybloggers that doesn’t deserve to be under police surveillance.  Leaving the pro forma  condescension aside, the guy actually tries to debate.  Kudos to him.

But here are some bonus questions:

If business does so well under liberal Democrat rule, then…:

  • Why is Paul Krugman’s wet-dream state California floating toward the surface, its belly slowly rotating toward the sky, with a private sector that is leaving the state as fast as moving trucks can be secured?
  • Ditto Illinois, which seems, more than any other, to be the state the MN DFL most idolizes?  It’s taxes are among the country’s highest, and its debt is out of control, and it is collapsing bit by bit.
  • Indeed, why are 9 of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment not only run by GOP governors, but have fundamentally GOP cultures – while most of the worst performers are Democrat (or southern Republican, which have plenty of other problems that have little to do with politics)?
  • You say unemployment isn’t the sole arbiter of economic heath?  OK – how about business climate?  Eight of Forbes’ top ten states for business climate are Republican (and mostly the ones with the low unemployment).  Eight of the bottom 10 are run by Democrats (Alaska is mostly Federal property and a hard place to do business; Mississippi is a basket case no matter who runs it).
  • But if you’ve read my blog, you know that states are rarely purely culturally and politically Democrat.  Like the rest of the nation, even “blue” states are mostly like Minnesota – Democrat-clogged urban cores surrounded by red.   OK – every one of Manpower’s 10 Worst Cities to Find a Job” is Democrat, as are all of 24/7 Wall Street’s Worst-Run Cities in America.  Detroit, Newark, Chicago, Camden, Los Angeles, the District of Columbia, Cleveland, Toledo, Philadelphia, Sacramento – all have for generations been Democrat sinecures; all are collapsing, all are miserable business environments – entirely due to generations of Democrat policies.

Mindeman concludes, more or less, by saying he believes business will benefit from DFL control.  It’s a faith-based statement.  And that’s fine; one can cheerlead one’s team as much as they want.

But judged against actual evidence viewed in meaningful, complete context, it’s pretty clear that’s all that it is.

Nope. No blizzard here.  No need to even button your jacket.

 

Every Single Day Of My Blogging Life

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SCENE:  MITCH is walking down Constitution Avenue, near the state capitol.  It’s a bright, bright, sunshiny day.  Detached-looking figures wander, aimlessly and slightly out of focus, in the distance.

(Aaron ROSTON, DFL activist, pro-bullying-activist and blogger from Fungus Flats, MN, is standing in the middle of the sidewalk).

MITCH (stepping around ROSTON):  Excuse me.

ROSTON (with supercharged sarcasm):  Oh, yeah, right.  You’re so excused.

MITCH:  Huh?

ROSTON:  Oh, right.  I just  bet you don’t understand me.

MITCH:  O…K…

(Walks onward)

Professor William G. KRIEPPI staggers into the frame as MITCH walks down the street.

MITCH: Hey, Professor.

(KRIEPPI abruptly lurches off the street, walks into a light pole, and falls, insensible, onto the grass, unconscious).

MITCH:  Damn.  Hey… (turns to passing figure, who turns out to be Dark MAYTON, billionaire playboy political consultant), er, can you help this guy?

MAYTON:  The moon is made of olives and I am pulsating.

MITCH (watches as MAYTON walks down the sidewalk.  KRIEPPI snores loudly on the grass).  What a very strange place.

ROSTON:  Oh, yeah. So strange…

MITCH:  Good lord, you’re a wierd little person.

(MITCH walks toward the Capitol,  He is presently accosted by a shadowy figure – that of PLARF BINGNERT, chief project manager in the Rhetorical Engineering department at  the Alliance for a Better Minnesota).

BINGNERT:  Mister Berg, why do you do these curious dialogues?  It’s almost as if you are trying to say something.

MITCH:  Well, usually, yes – but I feel as if this one has gotten out of control.  It’s like…

BINGNERT: WOOOOT WOOOOOOOOT WOOOOOOOT WOOOOOOOOP WOOOP WOOOOP WOOOOOP!

MITCH (sotto voce): What the hell?
ROSTON (in distance, walking in tight circle):  Oh, yeah – Mr. Family Values, using swears.  That’s so “family”. 
(BINGNERT wanders aimlessly away).  Po di po di po di po!
(MITCH wanders to the base of the capitol steps, sits on the base of the plinth of one of the statues of the Heroes of Minnesota Social Democracy).  
(Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, narrative-buffer for “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, dressed in Lederhosen and Doc Martens boots, rappels down from a bright orange helicopter). 
CARROLL (yelling shrilly through a megaphone):  HEY!  The GOP wants to sell your children!
MITCH:  No, they don’t. 
CARROLL (still yelling):  The GOP wants to run Minnesota from Mississippi!
MITCH: That’s just bizarre.
CARROLL (still yelling): They want to feed your children assault rifles!
MITCH: That just makes no sense.
ROSTON (yelling from middle of lawn):  Oh, yeah – Democrats never make sense, do they, Merg?
MITCH (sotto voce):  If I say “that’s a fascinating point”, will you go away?
(CARROLL wanders into the distance, shouting random accusations into the bullhorn.  As she and her din recede into the distance, a man dressed in a large purple rabbit costume hops laboriously up the sidewalk and stops in front of MITCH). 
RABBIT:  Hi.  I’m Wyatt RINKLER.  You only do these fantasy dialogues because you are afraid.  And having a melt-down.  
MITCH:  Well, no.  
RINKLER:  I’m too stupid to understand what you just said. 
ROSTON (suddenly up close):  Oh, we’re all too stupid, says Merg.  
MITCH:  (shakes head, as if to shake off a sucker punch)  Beg pardon?
RINKLER:  Yarby yarby yarby.
(RINKLER hops away into the distance, disappears over the horizon).  (Yes, a hoppable horizon is unaccountably visible from the Capitol.  Go figure). 
MITCH (walks up steps to Capitol doors.  ROSTON follows at a distance, making sarcastic-sounding noises that never quite resolve into words).  
MITCH (looking out over city):  Wow.  It must have been the burrito.
(From the Capitol comes an ephemeral shape, that of Cat SCAT, factoid bookkeeper for Take Action MN).
MITCH:  Hey.  Nice day, huh?
SCAT:  I’ll check to see what Daily Kos says.
ROSTON (muted in the distance): Oh, yeah - so nice!
MITCH (past caring):  So does Kos confirm?
SCAT:  Can you confirm that this dialog actually happened?
MITCH:  I can confirm that it did not actually happen.  It’s entirely a figment of my imagination.
SCAT:  So it’s a lie!
MITCH:  No.  It’s fiction.  Fiction illustrates, via storytelling, symbolism, metaphor, satire, humor and other devices, things that non-fiction writing can’t.  
(Senator Tom BAKK and speaker of the House Paul THISSEN walk out Capitol doors)
SCAT:  So you admit it’s false?
ROSTON (on sidewalk, dousing self in strawberry milkshakes): Oh, Merg is never false!
(BAKK and THISSEN pick MITCH’s pocket, replace wallet with a “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota” leaflet)
MITCH (ignoring ROSTON):  Irrelevant.  It’s neither “True” nor “False”.  It’s fictional, so it’s made up – but it can show what I reasonably believe to be larger truths.  Or not.  Sometimes satire is parody, sometimes caricature.  Sometimes it’s just plain absurdist, with the perceived truths buried beneath a heaping pile of misdirection. Sometimes it’s just mockery.  
SCAT:  That’s just wrong.
MITCH:  Wrong?  You mean, like a liberal TV star pretending to be an over the top caricature of a conservative TV star to satirize conservatives and our alt-media? 
SCAT (looks at at “Crooks and Liars” on IPad, is silent)
MITCH:  Er…Steven Colbert?
SCAT (Dissolves into the ether)
ROSTON (yells at passing teenage girl): Hey!  My sister had capris like that – until my dad got a job!  Who does your hair – Stevie Wonder?
MITCH:  Wow.  Imagine if they’d lost the election.  
(Walks to parking lot.  Gives leaflet to attendant.  Drives off into sunset).  

Just Like Old Times

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Nick  Coleman – the same one that used to sneer down his patrician mainstream-media nose at all of us villein bloggers - is blogging up a storm these days. 

He Who Knows Stuff has some advice for A-Klo:

Amy Klobuchar has been working hard to win the endorsement of Republican car dealers, like the ones featured in her campaign ad at the end of this post. But she hasn’t done so well impressing Minnesota progressives who are wondering why the state’s Senior U.S. Senator hasn’t been an outspoken opponent of the two heavy-handed Republican-forced constitutional amendments on the Nov. 6 ballot.

The car dealer ad is pure AKlo — a “She’s the Senator for All Minnesota!” ad about as sharp as mush in a bowl.

She’s sharp enough to know that her popularity – sky-high though the polls show it to be – is the same kind that Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan used to have in North Dakota.  Klobuchar is smart enough (or advised by people smart enough to know) that Minnesota is a purple state, that Barack Obama’s going to have all the coattails of a string bikini, and that she needs to shut up and make nice with everyone and not stick her neck out for anything.

Especially to oppose one amendment that, win or lose, will pin a negative on her, and another one that’s going to win by 3:2 even if the GOP doesn’t smoke the DFL on turnout.

There’s not much there, there with Amy Klobuchar.  But she’s not that dumb.

Coleman:

 The question is: Do Hugely Popular Politicians Still Have an Obligation to Try to Make a Difference?

Heh.  Coleman apparently thought Klobuchar was Paul Wellstone,  Politicians measure “obligations” as closely as engineers measure bridge gussets (which, if memory serves, Nick’s got some trouble with.  And memory does indeed serve).

Part of me isn’t sure that Coleman meant this next passage exactly as it sounds.  Part of me – the part that reads phrases like “do popular politicians have an obligation to make a difference” – thinks he means it exactly as written.  And the third part of me really really hopes he meant it exactly as it sounds (emphasis added):

 And both, at this point, seem likely to pass, in part because there is confusion among many Democrats as to how they should vote.

Are Democrats really such lemmings, or does Nick Coleman really think that’s all they are?

(Note: Requests to speak to Klobuchar, as well as to officials of her campaign, received no response).

Hey! Just like all us regular bloggers!

Bluestem Prairie: All The News That’s Fit To Yank From Between The Lines

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I’ve said it in the past, and I’ll say it again – Sally Jo Sorenson of the outstate-MN blog Bluestem Prairie is one of the Minnesota leftybloggers that doesn’t deserve to be under police surveillance.

But every once in a while, Sorenson – usually a capable reporter and observer – lets her inner snarkmeister romp and play a bit too much.

Sorenson jumped on a bit in my piece yesterday on the rhubarb between Rep. Mary Franson and some of her critics. Sorenson wrote:

We’ll get to what Franson actually said about feeding people on food stamps in a bit. But this passage is puzzling:

“the freshman conservative from Alexandria is most famous for the teapot-tempest that blew up last year about her video noting – from the perspective of someone who’d been there – that welfare treats people “like animals”.”

A reasonable reader would conclude upon reading “from the perspective of someone who’d been there” that Berg means that Mary Franson had at one time been on “welfare.”

But only if the “reasonable person” was hovering over the story looking for stray bits of chaff to yank out of context.  And yank.  And yank.

My line “from one who’s been there” was not implying that Franson had been on welfare.  It was a sloppy reference to a bit of Franson’s own bio that has popped up in many of her own statements on the issue.  .

And here’s where Sorenson’s thoroughness as a reporter saves the day for me – and sort of makes me wonder why she reached the conclusion she did; she obligingly includes one of Franson’s tellings of her own story, which helped form her views on welfare and dependency.  Sally Jo even provided the money quote:

It would have been very easy for me to get on to the system, enroll in all the various social programs, but I decided I wanted a better future for myself and for my future children, so I made up my mind that no matter what, I was going to succeed.

And that’s what happened, I succeeded. Obstacles came in my way and I pursued and I persevered. My successes didn’t come easy though but they were well worth it. I pray everyone in this state and in this country to have the same desire to succeed and be self-reliant.

There is pride in never letting yourself fall into the trap of dependence.

It was to this bit of Franson’s autobiography – which Rep. Franson has told a time or two over the past few years – that I was referring.

A “reasonable person” – the same one Sorenson conjured up when jumping to her conclusion – might think that, in fact, was what I was aiming for.  That would, in fact, be the truth.

I regret any confusion – although to be fair, I think the sloppiness of my statement was more than matched by the amount of gratuitous, unfounded assumption that Sorenson jammed into my mouth.

I also regret that Sally Jo Sorenson apparently felt the need to make such a very, very tenuous reach to try to dig up a rhetorical “gotcha”.  If I wrote a sloppy rhetorical check, Sorenson grabbed it out of the mail and tried to write a zero at the end of the amount.

While I left an editorial loose end, it was an unsupportable cheap shot.  We usually expect better.

Apropos Not Much

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One of the Twin Cities most utterly respected leftybloggers [1] had some questions about my traffic.  I said I got about 2,500 pageviews a day (I actually misspoke and said “visits”, but I meant page views, since visits are fairly meaningless – not that I don’t appreciate each and every one of them.

OK, actually it wasn’t “questions” – he claimed I was inflating my numbers.

So here’s a screenshot from this month’s logs:

I haven’t actually looked at my server logs in a year and a half, maybe two; I actually am doing about twice as well as I thought, with a recent swerve into much much better than I thought.

Not that it matters that much to me; I’d do the same blog if I got five visits a day.  Just saying.

Again, apropos not much.

Continue reading →

Gross Receipts

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It’s been a couple of years since this blog has run a “bleg” – asking for donations to defray some of the (minimal) cost of running the blog, and grab a few bucks for the (not minimal) time spent writing what you read here.

Fact is, I don’t need it that much.  Business is, oddly, pretty good.  Maybe next year.

But I would like you to take a moment to think about popping a few bucks in Gary Gross’ tip jar.

Gary writes Let Freedom Ring, and does some of the top-notchiest reporting there is, anywhere.  He does for Central Minnesota what I wish blogging and talk radio paid well enough for me to do in the Metro; he is the backbone of Central Minnesota’s regional conservative alternative media.

Unlike most of the regular leftybloggers, he does a ton of work; one of very few bloggers in the state more prolific than I am.  Unlike virtually all of the more prolific leftybloggers, he doesn’t have George Soros or Alida Messinger paying his bills.

Now, Gary’s in a rough financial situation.  The details aren’t that important, and I don’t even know many of them to be honest, but we’re not talking malfeasance, here; Gary is no MIchael Lohan or Charlie Sheen.

But he’s having to stretch things pretty far to keep his blog in production.

So if you can possibly spare a few bucks, this’ll be my bleg for the year; drop ‘em by Gary’s Paypal donation page.

Austin-tatiously Disingenuous

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Years ago, my old friend Moonbeam Birkenstock – who is much farther left than I am to the right – announced, with great noise and fury, that he was through paying the portion of his taxes to the Feds that went to defense.

“I refuse to contribute to the US military, which exists only to murder children and bomb innocent people” bellowed Birkenstock as we talked at a party.

I grinned a smug grin, pulled a pocket-sized copy of the US Tax Code from my pocket, and announced “You are teh LIER!!!  Nowhere in the IRS Tax code can you find a single reference to rifles or bombers or bombs or any sort of military hardware at all!”.

Moonbeam pulled a can of mace and gave me a long, wet blast in the face.  And as I coughed and hacked and wiped tears from my eyes, I knew I deserved it.

———-

Eric Austin is a liberal blogger from somewhere in central Minnesota.  We’ve run into him before – in one case, admitting in an audio passage that he condoned the bullying of the child of a conservative legislator because, in his words (seriously – follow the link and listen to the audio, if you can stomach it – it may be one of the most vile, reprehensible things I’ve ever heard) her mother had voted against a bill making bullying gay kids extra special illegal.

But that was then.  This is now.  Perhaps Austin’s rhetoric has improved with time and maturity?

 

Local conservative layabout, Gary Gross, has been churning out quite a few posts since the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act is, in fact, Constitutional. Any one of those posts could be the subject of another episode of Gross Inaccuracies but who has the time to keep up with a single childless unemployed blogger who lives off the government he loathes.

OK, ixnay on the whole “improvement” and “maturity” thing,  I’d say I’m curious how Mr. Austin thinks this sort of ugly, personal name-calling advances his, or any, argument…

…but I’m not curious.  It’s easy.  The fact is, it’s incredibly easy for Minnesota liberals to grow to what passes for “adulthood” these days – through their feminized public schools, a university system that marginalizes and expunges conservative dissent from the dominant narrative, and a media that accepts liberalism as the baseline for good and, via its leading figure Jon Stewart, “snark” as its main rhetorical cudgel – without having the foggiest idea how to debate a conservative, or even what real civilized debate is.

Which is why most liberals’ “arguments” start with ad hominem and tu quoque (“Look! My opponent said or did something that is inconsistent with something else he says or does!  That invalidates his entire argument!”) and proceed through…

…well…

Today’s episode of Gross Inaccuracies concerns the most ludicrous of these most recent posts about how terribly awfully no good it is to now have Romneycare (oops, I mean Obamacare). Gross fawns over an exchange on Fox News between Sarah Palin and the token Democrat on the show about how there really are DEATH PANELS in the Affordable Care Act.

Here is the relevant part of the exchange from Palin:

There’s a faceless bureaucratic panel and the acronym is the IPAB and the I-P-A-B, what that will be is that is a board that will tell you, Bob, whether your level of productivity in society is worthy of receiving the rationed care that will be the result of Obamacare.

Now there is a board called the Independent Payment Advisory Board but its purpose isn’t anywhere close to what Palin suggests. The duty of the board is to find ways to keep Medicare spending from growing out of control. However, one of its provisions specifically states that it may not recommend “rationing” care.

Right.  So – like my friend Moonbeam Birkenstock in the example at the top of this post, Palin has completely botched the entire factual basis of the argument…

…well, no.  She has assigned a role to one piece of the bureaucracy that will be practiced by another piece of the bureaucracy.  It might be a government agency, or as Austin notes from the mandate tax law…

From the Affordable Care Act:

‘‘(ii) The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost- sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria. [emphasis mine]

So what this means – if you accept it at face value – is that the law will not deal, in and of itself, with rationing.  That can is being kicked down the road.

Which brings us to a key fact of this debate, one that Obama and Obamacare’s supporters either don’t know or don’t want you to know.  It’s true that there will likely never be a room somewhere in northern Virginia with a brass plate on the door engraved with the title “Death Panel Conference Room”, and that nobody in whatever bureaucracy takes over Obamacare will have “Death Panelist” on their job description.

But in modern health care insurance parlance, the term you look for is “Case Management” (sometimes “Care Management”).  The term was spawned in the eighties, in the HMO industry, to cover the intersection of insurance, medicine and actuarial science.  And it’s the part of the health care insurance industry that goes through the utterly rational process of answering the question “if we have one transplantable liver, do we give it to the 43 year old guy with the curable degenerative enzyme disorder whose productive life expectancy will be increased by (on the average) ten years, or do we give it to the 70 year old chain-smoking diabetic alcoholic who has already run past her life expectancy given her current state of health”

To the 43 year old who gets the liver, it’s how the system works.  I suspect to the family of the 70 year old, the body that made that decision could be viewed as a “death panel”.

The facts, however, are…:

  • Neither the ACA nor Medicare nor Medicaid will need to “Create” any such “panels”, because Case Management has been a fact, and a key part, of health care insurance, for three decades now.
  • As Governor Palin notes, as the side-effects of the ACA drive more physicians from the industry and raise the cost (in terms of scarcity versus demand) of many of the more dramatic procedures, “Case Management” (a much drier and less dramatic term than “Death Panel”) will need to decide more and more who will get first crack at the limited supplies of medical miracles – livers, chemotherapy, hours on dialysis machines, whatever – and who will get “Palliative care” to make the slow degeneration to death (or disability, or whatever the end result of the condition being treated, liver disease, cancer, kidney failure or  actually is) more tolerable.
  • Lest you missed it, this is a fact of life in the health insurance business today.   The difference, of course, is that most people can find alternate paths to treatment today; there’s more than just the one, government, path to the treatment they need, if the insurance industry gives them flak.  When private insurance is inevitably priced out of the market – as it will be after a few years of Obamacare undercutting them with losses underwritten by taxpayers – then there’ll just be one avenue for getting care.  That’s it.
Austin:

While Palin continues to use a lie that has been repeatedly debunked by fact checking organizations and was even named the Lie of the Year by one,

Not by “one” – by “Politifact”, which has been pretty well shown (via the “Lie of the Year” canard and some even more egregious episodes) to be less a “fact checking” organization and more a Democrat propaganda mill.

Austin takes issue with Gross’ explanation of the various bureaucratic roles involved, and reaches some conclusion:

Let’s take a couple things here, Gary. First, the Independent Payment Advisory Board doesn’t look at any “individuals” but rather looks at the Medicare system as a whole and it explicitly states in its mission that it shall not recommend “rationing” health care. Second, the phrase “quality adjusted life years” is not used ANYWHERE in the Affordable Care Act.

This, Austin calls a “lie”.  At the most, of course, it’s an “error” – “Lying” requires some intent to deceive.

And, like my friend Moonbeam at the top of the story, the only immediate error (or, if you’re a liberal talking about a conservative, “lie”) is in mixing up different layers of administrators.

Sophistic niggling about different layers of the bureaucracy is the kind of thing that sends tingles up law students and bureaucracy-nerds’ legs.  But in terms of the actual effect of Obamacare on real people, they’re all distinctions without differences.  They are all parts of a system that will, inexorably, lead to increased shortage, hiked costs and diminished availability.

Which will be arbitrated by some body, somewhere.

And you can call it a “Case Management Process”, a “Death Panel”, or a “Happy Time Commission” for all anyone cares.  The result in terms that real people, real taxpayers, care about is always, and can only be, the same.

And with those immutable facts in place, I suppose responding to dissent with snark and ad-hominem is better, to some, than just admitting you’re wrong and addressing that whole “why do you promote the bullying of children?” thing.

Who Do Minnesota Liberals Hate, 2012 Edition: The Voting Continues!

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Who do Minnesota Liberals hate?

Feel free to particpate in this vital sociological research through Monday night at 11:59PM!  Just leave your list of the top ten or so in the comment section (or email it to “feedbackinthedark@yahoo.com”), in order from most to least hated.

Results will start coming out on Tuesday.

Nominees so far are below the jump.

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Ten Years Of Power

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I never actually knew the official anniversary – but I’m happy to send my congratulations to my good friends John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson at Power Line, who celebrated their megablog’s tenth anniversary over the weekend.

You may recall that my blog celebrated its tenth last February; of the Twin Cities’ huge mass of conservative political blogs, it’s Power Line, Ed Morrissey, Lileks, King Banaian of the late SCSU Scholars and the Fraters who’ve been in it since the very beginning.   And sometimes it’s hard to remember, in those pre-MOB days, what a solitary thing blogging was.

For those of you who notice how omnipresent blogs are today, it’s almost funny reading this piece from Brian Ward, back around election time in 2002, when all of us, Brian and Chad at the Fraters and Scott, John and Paul at Power Line were not only brand new, we hadn’t the faintest idea each other existed:

 A month ago I didn’t know of any quality blogs devoted to the local scene, which made me think that perhaps a niche existed that was crying out to be filled. But since then, I’ve become aware of both Power Line and Mitch Berg and they’re both outstanding in exactly this type of coverage (and they consistently link to local media nuggets before I do!) It makes me think that maybe I can dial back my own political coverage and commentary and concentrate more on my real interests. That would be college women’s volleyball scores, my continuing search for the perfect Hungarian Ghoulash recipe, and celebrating the poetry of Leonard Nimoy. Now that’s a niche that needs filling.

It’d be almost a year before I’d meet Brian and King face to face for a drink at Sweeney’s on Dale, and fourteen months before the fateful meeting that led eventually to the forming of the “Northern Alliance Radio Network” – and all that’s happened since.   And in those ten years, John, Scott, Paul and company have built one of the most estimable presences in the conservative alt-media, topped with the rhetorical pelts of Dan Rather and not a few lesser lefty lights.

Anyway, happy anniversary, guys!

14,000-Odd Posts

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2612 weekdays of waking up at 5:30AM and writing til 7-ish.

520 weeks of following the Minnesota news cycle.

Two Presidential, three Gubernatorial, three Senate and 32 Congressional contests, plus five complete legislative election cycles and 11 Legislative sessions.  One wrestler ushered out of office; one Senatorial plane crash and two electoral train wrecks covered.  The decline of two major cities chronicled (keep checking back, that story’s not done).  One complete conversion, from conservative public school supporter to implacable enemy and charter school zealot.

A national convention, three major state conventions.

A couple of dozen Instalanches, and heaven knows how many Hot Air-alanches.

Two desktop and three laptop computers gone through, along with three blogging platforms and counting.

Hundreds of Nick Coleman, Lori Sturdevant and Brian Lambert columns and “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” memes disposed of.

Dozens of leftyblogger attacks met, trashed, humiliated and, in more than a few cases, out-lived.  One Soros publication outlasted.

Decades?  One.  So far.  Working on number two.

This one kinda snuck up on me; Shot In The Dark turns ten years old today.  And when I say “snuck up on me”, I mean, yeah – I knew after last year’s “ninth anniversary” that there would likely (God willing) be a tenth.  But I woke up this morning and it kinda smacked me upside the head.

I’ve told the story a bunch of times – including every year on this anniversary; I started this blog in 2002, at a time when, after fifteen years out of talk radio, with two kids and working at a failing dotcom, I was keenly feeling the absence of an outlet for my inner pundit.  I read an article in Time about the “New Breed of Conservative Intellectuals”, featuring – ahem – Andrew Sullivan.  The piece mentioned Sullivan’s main outlet – his “blog”.  There was a little sidebar piece on “What Is A Blog”, which led me to “Blogger.com”.  At home from work that night, I started the original Shot In The Dark.  And other than a week off at the end of 2003, and a few odd days off here and there, I think I’ve had something up every weekday, and most weekends, since then.  At the time, I plugged it on a couple of E-Democracy forums, and held steady at about 10 hits a day for the first nine months or so.

My traffic has grown, and remained, really big by regional standards since then.  But as I’ve said for years, I have always done it for me, and would still do it if I were my only traffic.  The blog has brought an avalanche of blessings, the greatest of which has been a great group of friends – Brian, Atomizer, Sisyphus and Chad (an email from Brian was the first indication I found that there were other bloggers in the Twin Cities, back in mid-2002), Ed, John and Scott, Mr. D, King Banaian (whose blog is offline for the duration of his legislative career, which for Minnesota’s sake had best be long and successful), Brad Carlson, Michael Brodkorb and his various successors at MDE, James Lileks, Learned Foot, Derek and Nancy and Guy and the whole crew over at the Dogs, Katie, Gary, Sheila, Pianomomsicle,  Ringer, Roosh, Bogus, and the entire True North syndicate, and the whole MOB, really, which led to the radio show (which is itself headed for an anniversary next month).  Beyond that, it’s been a long train of personal and intellectual growth – or maybe “growth” – and a constant introduction to opportunities that I’d never dreamed of ten years ago.

So I’d still do it just for myself – but I’m glad I don’t have to!

Anyway – thanks to all your regular readers, and the new friends (and occasionally adversaries) that’ve popped up over the past (gulp) decade.  God willing and with a tailwind, we can do it again!

It’s A Blog’s Life

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It’s one of those weeks in the history of this blog I used to dream about around this time last year, when I was basically donating a couple of hours a day (usually 5-7AM and/or 9-11PM) to blogging for the Emmer campaign and the rest of the GOP slate, then racing to the day job, then feeding the kids, then the evening routine, and then – often as not – more blogging.  Back then, I was existing on caffeine and adrenaline and that buzz you get when you’ve got a feeling you’re really onto something.  The pace was frantic, and there was this amazing intensity to blogging…

…that burned me out hard.  After the election, it was probably February before I really got my mojo back.

If I’ve noticed one thing in almost (yeep) ten years of writing this blog, it’s that there’s a cycle to things; the “storms”, if you will, when you’re riding a rocket and on a constant adrenaline buzz are memorable, of course; the 2010 Gubernatorial Election, the 2008 race and the coverage of the Republican National Convention (and, mostly, the protests against it), the 2006 race and the naked media bias, and of course being one degree of separation from the explosion of Rathergate back in 2004, sitting in the studio at the Patriot as John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson were riding in on the curl that’d wash Dan Rather out to palookaville.

And after the storm, if you will, comes the hangover; the days, or weeks, when you can barely think about writing; when you’ve thrown everything you have into it, and don’t think you have any more.  It’s the kind of thing that’s ended more than a few blogs much better than mine.  Me?  I get through the hangover by getting through it; I love writing, even when I hate writing, so I make sure I, well, write.

Because when you weather the hangover, you get to days like today.  The calm before the next storm, if you will.

Oh, it’s really only calm on the surface.  There is a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes.  Stories that have been under the radar for months that are about to break back out into the open.  Projects that have been bubbling along for years that are about to re-erupt  (my “This Was The Year That Was” project, the thirtieth anniversaries of the great albums of the early eighties, is about to start ticking again – and of course, my “World War II: Fact And Myth” series is really just getting started, although a good chunk of it through 2014 is already written).

And of course, another big election.   Maybe the biggest one since 1980, really.

So that’s one thing I’ve learned – there’s a cycle.

The other thing I’ve learned?  The first rule of the “Calm Before The Storm” is “never talk about the calm before the storm” and ruminate that the next couple of months on this blog are going to be all pastoral and low-key.  It’s the best guarantee that something is going to blow up big-time in the next week.

No.  I know better than that.

Two-Edged iSword

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I’m always amused by media types who smugly proclaim that they – the media – are what stands between the hoi-polloi and tyranny.

Part of it is the whole matter of “”The pen is mightier than the sword” can only have been written by someone who never had to bet his life on it” bit.  And part of it is that the media, like any institution, is no less liable to being co-opted and turned than any other.  Remember – Germany had a “Free Press” from 1918 through 1933.  Fat lotta good it did them.

Ditto the alternative media – and maybe worse.  The alt-media has wrapped itself in the cloak of righteousness…

…but as events in Syria show, it can be co-opted for tyranny just as easily as for freedom. Because while Syria’s government propaganda is the kind of thing that Baghdad Bob could have done, its population of pro-government nerds is drawing blood.

Literally:

They call themselves the Syrian Electronic Army, conducting the most intense cyberwarfare in the Arab world, says Jillian York, with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“I’ve really never seen anything like this before, like the Syrian Electronic Army, which just seems to have so many members,” she says. “I think it’s really just their level of persistence and their level of activity that sets them apart.”

Are they a part of the regime? That is uncertain, says York, although Syrian President Bashar Assad saluted the youth of the Electronic Army in a June speech when they first emerged.

“So it may be that they are supported by the government; it may be that they are independent pro-government forces,” York says.

They’ve co-opted the “social media networks” that were so ballyhooed in the uprisings in Egypt and Bahrain,and hacked into pro-dissident sites in the West, and begun, perhaps, to turn the advantage of the social network into a liability.

Point/Counterpoint: Rumors Of Its Demise Are Exaggerated

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There are those who say that political blogging is dead – replaced by Twitter.

To explore the issue, I present a Point/Counterpoint debate between myself and my evil twin brother Jed.

MITCH:  Is political blogging dead?  Who cares?  As long as I enjoy doing it, it’s alive!

JED: Solipsistic as always, Mitch.  The larger point is this; if all political communication is going to have to squeeze down to 140 characters (less links), then completing the de-evolution to Duckspeak is really just a formality.

The winner:  Both of us!

That is all.

Homes For Heroes

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Just a reminder – the benefit for Homes for Heroes is Sanday, 3pm to 6pm, at the St. Cloud Holiday Inn, (Division Street & 37th Avenue).

Homes for Heroes builds and renovates homes to make them accessible for badly-injured veterans.

The benefit is a wine tasting, along with a Silent Auction. Hors d’oeuvres will be served!

Admission is $50 Per Ticket or $75 For Two – 50% Military Discount.

The party is loaded with guest speakers:

  • Andy Pujol – President, Building Homes for Heroes
  • Dan “Doc” Severson – US Senate Candidate
  • King Banaian – State Representative
  • Steve Gottwalt – State Representative

Tickets Available online here.

For more information or local sales, call (320) 281- 4523

Dear Chris Cilizza: All Is Forgiven

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To:  Chris Cilizza
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Durr.

Mr. Cilizza:

In the past, I have criticized your “best blogs” lists for being myopic assortments of blogs driven mostly by fanboy response.

Then I saw “CBS Minnesota”‘s – that’d be WCCO’s – assortment of blogs in their “Most Valuable Blogger” awards.

Now, I don’t much care about the Dining, Sports, Entertainment, Heath or “Everything Else” sections – because I don’t read any of those categories, ever – I gotta say the “Local Affairs” selection is…

…well,  you be the judge).

In a state full of heavyweight blogs that actually make a difference, WCCO provides this list of blogs ranging from the unknown to “Cantina Band” who have only their liberalism in common…

…ah, gotcha.

Anyway, Mr. Cilizza, all is forgiven.

That is all.

MBerg

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