The Minnesota Monitor is a financial first cousin of Peruvian terrorists?

The Iron Matron at KAR has the story:

Found today at the Capital Research Center:

Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes in today’s Wall Street Journal that George Soros’s Open Society Institute has been funding terrorism. In a column entitled Friends of Terror in Peru, O’Grady notes that

Thursday’s vote by the European Parliament to take the Peruvian guerrilla group known as the Tupac Amaru (aka MRTA) off its terrorist list has Peru in an uproar. For good reason: The MRTA is notorious for kidnapping, torturing and murdering civilians to advance its political agenda. More recently, Peruvian officials have linked it to Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian Movement,” which seeks to destabilize democracies in Latin America, and to the Colombian rebel group FARC…

…Meanwhile the work of other foreign-funded NGOs in the interest of terrorist organizations warrants urgent attention. Take the Peruvian “human-rights” group Aprodeh, which labored in Europe to get the MRTA off the terrorist list there, even though Peru still considers it a grave threat to its security.

…In 2007, according to government records, Aprodeh received funding from Oxfam America, George Soros’s Open Society, the John Merck Foundation, the city of Barcelona, the Dutch embassy and a U.S. government agency called the Inter-American Foundation, among others. On Friday, the Peruvian government asked Aprodeh to explain how its NGO status allows it to intervene on behalf of terrorists, as it did in the European Parliament… [emphasis added]

Soros funds MN Monitor and Aprodeh?!???

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci adds:

You forgot to close the circle!

(Don’t worry – I took a screengrab just in case).

The Center for “Independent” Media; a gift that just keeps on giving.

So a little over a month after Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros Monitor pondered Rep. Bachmann’s reticence about giving time to regional non-conservative/Christian media, and my challenge in turn to Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Growth and Justice leader Dane Smith and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, I can report the following:

• Stuart Smalley:  Bupkes.
• A-Klo:  Nada
• Keef:  Zippo
• Betty Mac:  Pfffft.
• Dave Thune:  While not specifically part of my original challenge, I did ask Thune several times to come on the air for some questions about his “puking Republicans” slur.  We’ve not heard the last of that one, yet.
• Dane Smith:  We had an excellent interview on the NARN a week and a half ago
• R.T. Rybak: Well, glorioski!  We have confirmed the Mayor for this Saturday’s NARN broadcast!  The Mayor’s press contact and I just confirmed the details!  I will welcome the Mayor to the show on the broadcast this Saturday, May 3rd.

Kudos the the Mayor! 

And hey, Andy Birkey?  Since Franken, BettyMac, Ellison and A-Klo don’t return my calls, why don’t you ask them why they are even more evasive around right-leaning media than Rep. Bachmann is around the left-leaning media?

Not that I’ll hold my breath or anything.

Kool Aid Report has appointed all of us the winner of the 2008 City Pages “Best Blog” category!

Who better to decide?

And since we can reliably assume that City Pages’ silence equals consent, you can all feel free to sell your award on e-bay without any questions about your award’s authenticity!

I think the price just dropped…

But why would you want to do that? Wouldn’t you rather share company with the other City Pages-selected local media all stars such as:

Best Columnist (Nick Coleman)?

Best TV Weatherperson (Paul Douglas)?

Best FM Radio Personality (Kerri Miller)?

Best Art Critic (who gives a shit?)?

Sport that graphic proudly, fellow local right wing blogger! Even though KAR now remains the only local right-wing blog to never win a City Pages award, we KARnies consider ourselves proud to count you as our colleagues!

Congrats!  You, I and all of us are #1!

This’ll larn me to leave town.  My good friend and longtime NARN colleague King Banaian is in the hospital, and scheduled for surgery this morning.  Apparently he took ill after the NARN show on Saturday.

Gary Gross from Let Freedom Ring has the story:

I just got an email update from Barbara Banaian, the wife of my good friend King Banaian. King went into the St. Cloud Hospital Saturday night and has been in there ever since. Yesterday, they ran some tests. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to diagnose the problem with those tests. Today, they ran more tests which helped them diagnose the problem. Here’s the important part of Barb’s email update:

King was scheduled to have his gall bladder removed tomorrow morning at 8:15 a.m., but is currently running a high fever and having heart palpitations.

…

This is just another reminder of how close the ties are between MOBsters.

Indeed.

Keep King (and his wife Barbara and their daughter, the Littlest Scholar)  in your prayers tonight and in the coming days.

I’m extremely busy today. 

Posting will be exceedingly light to possibly nonexistant today and tomorrow. 

Joe Repya finally has a blog. 

Glad you could join the party, Colonel.

The City Pages seems to have been embarassed out of doing best left-and-right-wing blogs this year.  Was it because Dan Lacey’s tone-perfect riposte (selling his “award” on EBay) skewered them to the heart?  Or was it because any award that puts “Clucking Stoop” and “best” in the same paragraph (unless followed by “emetic”) is so absurd on its face that liberal bloggers rose as one in embarassment  to demand they never, ever do that again?

It matters not.  The City Pages got out of the kitchen, opting for a “Best Local Blog” category.

And the winner?

Unlike so many bloggers, Carik doesn’t use his platform to disgorge treatises on his political views or journal the minutiae of his daily life. Instead, his stripped-down site simply offers links to other web pages he finds interesting, with perhaps a sentence or two of comment, as if he’s doing this simply as a public service. What sets Mediation apart, however, is the sheer range of Carik’s posts. There seems to be no area of human endeavor he isn’t interested in: politics and current events, science and mathematics, art, music, theater, pop culture, history—it’s all grist for his digital mill. In recent weeks, for example, visitors found links to a complex maze puzzle, a YouTube video of a 10-year-old Japanese girl playing Kansas’s “Carry on My Wayward Son” on an electronic organ, a Business Week article criticizing the Treasury Department’s plan to overhaul the financial regulatory system, and a story on the smallest black hole yet discovered. His posts are almost always informative, oddly fascinating, or amusing.

Ah.

Kind of like Instapundit?

When Michele Bachmann  – representative from a mostly-conservative, mostly rural district – limits her appearances to conservative and Christian media, freezing out the traditional media and their anti-conservative hatchet-jobbery, the Minnesota Monitor furrows its brow and makes concerned-yet-snarky noises.

Uh-oh – now Barack Obama has abandoned all non-liberal-suckup media!

TalkLeft has some interesting criticisms about how Barack Obama is handling the press. Obama hasn’t held a press conference in 10 days, has limited his appearance to friendly outlets like The Daily Show, and snapped at a reporter who gave him a foreign-policy question at a Pennsylvania diner.

I don’t care about the waffle “incident” so much – let the poor fella eat!  But he wants to be the President after exposing his ideas to nothing more challenging than John Stewart, who wore knee pads to the interview?

Furrow your brows, MinMon. 

Furrow.

It’s been a month since Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Monitor complained that Rep. Michele Bachman (GOP, MN6) fails to disregard the Minnesota mainstream media’s anti-conservative hackery, and limits most of her media to conservative and Christian outlets.

I responded by sending invites to half a dozen key DFL office-holders and candidates. I left emails and, in almost all cases, voice mails with the media contacts for Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Keith Ellison, my own “representative” Betty McCollum, Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak, and Growth and Justice president Dane Smith. In the intervening time, I also invited Saint Paul City Council prez Dave Thune to talk with us about his “puking Republicans” slur.

Of course, on Saturday Ed and I interviewed Dane Smith of G’nJ. It was, nearest I could figure, an excellent hour – although frustraing. I think we could devote a couple of shows to be debate between the “Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota” movement that Smith represents, and the opposition of which I’m a part. It was a civil debate – notwithstanding the conceit of talk radio’s opponents, who believe we’re entirely about plate-throwing – and hopefully the first of several.

I noted last week that, in addition to Smith, I’d heard from another of my invitees. Sort of.

Someone in RT Rybak’s press office left a comment on “The Upsider” (a regional blog you should be reading) denying that I’d emailed the Mayor. I responded, in the comment as well as via email, saying that I’d left a note at the City of Minneapolis site on a form that said “we’ll forward the message to the right party”. Apparently that didn’t include the mayor’s office.

We traded an email or two last week. We shall see.

But I’ve heard not a peep from candidate Al Franken’s campaign, or from te press offices of Representatives Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, or Senator Amy Klobuchar.

The logical conclusion is that, while conservative politicians have to either run the gauntlet of hostile left-leaning mainstream media or be considered “evasive” by the even more hostile, more left-leaning alternative media, Minnesota’s liberal politicians feel no compunctions about ignoring the half of their constituents with whom they disagree. They are afraid to face tough questions, preferring the vacuous softballs they get from a regional media that largely regards them as friends – a regional media that largely sympathizes with them (the Strib’s Rochelle Olson and the wife of Keith Ellison have been observed to have a cordial social relatioship; it seems unlikely that most of the Strib’s staff will get too tough with Amy Klobuchar, daughter of longtime columnist Jim Klobuchar; that Dave Thune feels the need to depart the friendly confines of the local media and the lefty echochamber to answer questions.

Which is the sign of a particularly gutless breed of politicians.

UPDATE AND BUMP:  I neglected, in my haste, to note the name of the blog via which I came into contact with Mayor Rybak’s office – The Upsider.

No, not the football team – the anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride to mobilize the militia against the British, and the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

By bypassing the mainstream media and taking the word directly to the people, Revere was in a sense the first conservative blogger; indeed, had his horse been named “Blog”, the metaphor would stand on its own.

Sadly, that is not the case.

However, a look through Massachusetts state archives reveals that, like a good conservative pundit in the public eye, Revere stirred up a firestom of controversy.

In the Bofton Ftar-Tribune, columnist Richelieu Sturdevaant wrote:

Patriots of olde have lamented to me that thif is a fad, far cry from the old days in Maffachufettes, where real patriots worked with the Britifh Government!

Zebulon Perry, writing the Maffachufsetf Monitor – a broadsheet funded by British parliamentarian and tax patriarch George Townsend, wrote:

Revere, who riddeth fourth against the lawful Brittifh taxes, is funded by the Sons of Liberty!

Hezekiel Martens, of Citizens for a British Massachusetts, noted:

The righte to keepe and bear armfe is clearly laid down in the Britifh Conftitutione to derive to the Militia, which is the Britifh Redcoatte. Mufkettes kill 1,000,000 Maffachufettef children a year.

Grace Kelleye, writing fo the broadsheet MassRed, wrote:

George Washington is the real fascist. We should all lay down on the roade in front of Mr. Revere.

Lord Jefferey Fleckey of Broadsheet of the Moderatte Royaliste simply wrote:

Revere if fo pwnn3edde

And Otis Coleman of the Ftrib wrote:

Fure, fit a ftupid overfexed filverfmith aftride a faft horfe, and fure, he’ll feel like a ftud. Fo what? He’fe no big cheefe. Af a feventh-grader fitting on my knapfack, sucking on a sucker, fifty yearf ago on the weft fide of Bofton, I faw that.

Really!

Happy Patriots Day!

Last week, I noted that of the six big DFL pols or organizations that I’d contacted – Franken, Klobuchar, Ellison, McCollum, Rybak, and Growth and Justice – none had responded to my request for an interview.

This, of course, in response to Andy Birkey’s piece in the Minnesoros Monitor, who sniffed that Michele Bachmann seemed to be limiting her media appearances to friendly conservative and Christian outlets.

And we have an update!

I left phone and email messages to all of the subjects save one, for whom I couldn’t find phone numbers. And as I noted, I got responses from only one – and Dane Smith of Growth and Justice will be appearing on the NARN this weekend.

And now there’s another – maybe.

Updates as they are warranted.

Andy Birkey is very, very concerned about violence at the Republican National Convention this September.

Well, at least about violence that hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ever happening – like the button-pushing comment of a couple of morning talk show hosts.

The Twin Cities’ newest conservative talk show host has an idea for managing the thousands of protesters coming to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September: machine guns.

Chris Baker, formerly a talk radio host in Houston, took over the morning spot on KTLK in early March. On Friday, he took issue with the debate among Minneapolis law enforcement personnel as to whether police should limit the use of Tasers and pepper spray on protesters in Minneapolis (link to audio file). Baker’s suggestion is violent suppression of what he calls “stinky protesters” that are part of “an industry funded by billionaires and communist organizations (and) they are well-coordinated and incredibly dangerous.”

Dog bites man. The MNMon gets its monthly stipends from Mr. Soros. A talk show host pushes peoples’ buttons to elicit a controversial, emotional reaction from everyone in the audience, thereby generating more publicity, ergo more traffic.

Which doesn’t fit?

Trick question, of course; they’re all the same.

Baker continued: “So we’ve been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming. There seems to be a big debate over whether or not police officers will be able to wear helmets, carry shields, use pepper spray and Tasers on this crowd. You know, I’ll tell you what works on a crowd like this — a machine gun, that always works very well.”

Baker’s co-host, “Jordan,” agreed: “Mow ’em down, baby!” he added.

Yawn.

Seriously. So friggin’ what?

Does Chris Baker run any police department?

Closed-Circuit to Birkey:  talk with Media reporter Paul Schmelzer; talk radio is all about pushing buttons.  Not to say I agree with this particular stunt or statement – doy – but please.

Peace advocate and former FBI agent Coleen Rowley heard the violent rhetoric on Friday. “It doesn’t take an expert on the First Amendment to recognize that suggesting the ‘good ol’ boy network’ hand out ax handles and machine guns be used to mow a crowd down comes close to inciting violence,” she wrote at the Huffington Post. “This inflammatory rhetoric looks no different than the reason we are not allowed to falsely yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Ah. So Colleen Rowley – via the left’s paid stooges in the Sorosphere – is calling for censorship.

Whew.  To think we coulda had her in Congress!

She continued: “I can also speak from personal experience — having worked almost 24 years as an FBI agent — that such remarks would almost certainly elicit investigative concern if the tables were turned and such speech came out of the mouth of someone critical of the government.”

Well, about that…

I have no idea what the “official” level of concern is, but I can’t help but notice that while Andy Birkey is right on the remarks of an obscure morning host in Minneapolis who has absolutely no police command authority, neither he nor the Monitor have ever written about the many, many remarks by the anarkids, and their plans to disrupt the convention, and life in Saint Paul in general (either actively or by passive, tacit approval), plans that are even making putative peaceniks nervous.  Plans to stalk delegates, to attack military recruiters and war memorials, plans (and rehearsals) to actively provoke violence.

So answer me this question, Andy Birkey (or anyone who is paying attention to this story):  who is more likely to actually cause any sort of problem at all in Saint Paul this September?

The “anarchists”  – upper-middle-class fops who are taking out their anger at mommy and daddy by playing at being working-class heroes, who’ve been chattering like a bunch of lemurs on amyl about the disruption they want to cause, the vandalism they want to wreak, the mayhem they plan?

Or a talk show host?

Backup question:  The Minnesota Monitor has been, since its founding, largely a joke.  So what’s the next step down from “joke?”

Steve Perry at the MNMon on John McCain’s blog success story, quoting Steven Dinan of the WashTimes:

[Official McCain website blogger Patrick]  Hynes said the back-and-forth with bloggers took ‘a great deal of sting out of the criticisms’ over immigration, Mr. McCain’s push for campaign-finance changes and other areas where conservatives have registered their discontent with the senator, who has secured enough delegates to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

“‘It gave him a microphone when others had already left the building,’ said David All, one of the Republicans’ Web pioneers who runs SlateCard.com and who said Mr. McCain has benefited from Mr. Hynes’ ties to bloggers. ‘That very much symbolizes the role of bloggers: We don’t have editors to report to, and there isn’t a big meeting with editors every morning. What that comes down to is personal relationships.'”

Perry:

McCain has gotten good mileage out of his conference calls with righty bloggers, as these posts at Captain’s Quarters,  Townhall and Race42008 attest.

As opposed to the left, which spends millions subsidizing blogs like…well, MNMon, and get…

…well, Ted Lamont.  And Obama Girl.

Phil Miller might be known as “the King Banaian of Mankato”.

Or he might not.

But “Market Power” is very worth a read.  I liked this bit on non-profits’ penchant for institutional self-glorification:

There is a statement on a another department’s bulletin board near my office that states that “non-profits are the driving force behind change in our community.”  Of course the statement is nonsense aside from its rhetorical content.  That something needs to “change” means that something is not working well.   If something is to change, someone has to realize it and he must take actions to make things work better.  That means he has to have the right incentives.  Why is it that the incentives are better and/or the information use is better in non-profits than in the profit seeking world?

At any rate, “Market Power” is an excellent economics blog, sort of like “SCSU Scholars” but with less Red Sox and – this is important – more home-brewing recipes.

Brad Carlson reminds us that today’s the birthday of the patriarch of the MOB’s First Family, and the MOBster who vies with me for title of “most voluble Springsteen fan”, John “Not That One” Stewart of Night Writer.

I think we might be tryng to get together with him at a certain Irish joint this evening, maybe. Stay tuned.

“MLP” is married to the guy who coached my college’s basketball team when I was in school, whom I remember mainly for being the only other guy in Jamestown who’d ever heard of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, much less being a fellow fan.

And her little sister is Katie “Yucky Salad” McCollow and their brother Bill, who are both two of the funniest bloggers in the Twin Cities (but you knew that, and most of you read them, hence they’ll be part of a future series called “Minnesota Blogs You Probably Are Reading”, which might just start any day now), and her other brother is Joe, who lived down the hall from me, and across the quad from this person in college…

…OK, I seem to have subreferenced myself into a corner.

Anyway – MLP writes “Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry“, which “does low-key and droll” the way little sister Katie does “side-splitting”.

It’s a lot of “family life” stuff – where “family” means a bunch of wryly-drawn kids and a bunch of siblings whose biography could be called “Seven Brides for Seven Itinerant Basketball Coaches…”

Oh, dear. Again, I’ve slipped down a long tangent.

Which is kinda how “Casual Sundays” rolls, anyway.

“I did four pages, no sweat,” [son] told me. “And at the end, we were supposed to come up with a metaphor for hope. I wrote ‘Hope is a fish; it breathes where there is no air.’.”

“Hey, that’s good.” I said, “Where did you get that?”

“I pulled it right outta my butt!”

My son, the poet.

Oh, there’s tons more.

Sean, the alpha gigglyfratboy at MNDFLPressReleaselius MNPublius, really really thought he had something “light” this morning: some dirt on Derek Brigham, graphics designer to the center-right stars and a principal at FreedomDogs and True North:

The designer of MDE’s and David Strom’s website(s) is compared to a propagandist for Stalin on his website.

“If Derek Brigham lived in the Soviet Union he would have designed propaganda posters for Stalin.“

Some things in this world are funny. Millions of dead Russians– are not not funny.

I’ll cut Sean the benefit of a doubt and assume the double negative was not not not an endorsement of genocide.

The little feeling in your stomach when you just thought about the fact that the guy who designed the David Strom’s website was compared to Stalin’s propagandist?

That deserves a chuckle.

Not as big as the one that Sean deserves.

A little bird – in this case, a source with very close knowledge of both parties to the quote on Derek’s site – writes:

If they knew anything about Pavel [the author of the quote] they would know how much he hates the commies, he grew up under them as a Speznatz [special forces] trainer in Latvia. [Russian Constructivist-influenced design motif is a] tip to his Russian heritage and the great determation in sports with a healthy dose of disdain for the communist shackles it was under.

Wow.

That’d be really embarassing – to try to link a blogger (not to mention David Strom, the most liberty-conscious pundit in the Twin Cities) to Stalin, and then find out you’d not only extracted the wrong motivation, but done it in a way that the originator of the quote would probably find deeply insulting, to say nothing of incredibly presumptuous.

You’d think after last week’s “McCain’s Teeth” incident, the Twin Cities Sorosphere would learn to “be quiet and be thought a fool, rather than open their mouths and remove all doubt”.

(more…)

Somewhere in Corinthians, it says that God gives people gifts in the faith according to what people can best put to use – or words to that effect (I blame translation difficulties from the Greek for any misunderstandings. That’s the ticket).

Which is one of the reasons I don’t write a whole lot about religion; God’s seen fit to put my strengths in areas other than “being articulate about faith”.

But it’s always a treat – and a blessing, in every sense of the term – when I find someone who not only writes articulately about faith, but asks the big questions and reflects the churn a lot of us feel in looking (or waiting) for the answers.

Which is why I like Amanda Carranza’s “Within the Discord” so much.

Yes, I said big questions:

A lot of things have happened the last few days, a lot of things reminding me of just what an active role my Heavenly Father plays in not only my life, but my every happiness. A lot of these things are confusing, yet exciting, and I’m not exactly sure what to do with them. How do I harness this and bring glory to God through the written word? How do I encourage others with my blatherings, and yet not come across as self-important? (How do I not feel self-important when something I write just happens to make sense in my own head?) How do I convey my flaws, how do I prevent myself from shying away from them? How do I present who I am, my identity of who God sees me as, as accurately as can be expected, and yet still encourage each others and not thoroughly discourage myself?

Well, there’s a question, can I become thoroughly discouraged while examining myself through God’s eyes?

Of course, reading pushes me to ask the same questions – and that’s usually pretty revelatory, or at least something most of us could stand to do more of, no matter what we believe.

I still maintain Paul Schmelzer might be the closest thing to a legitimate journalist at the MNMon anymore.

But I read this piece this morning at the Monitor – which, as Erik Black noted in confirming a years’ worth of hints and suspicions, numbers George Soros among the other “liberals with deep pockets” that underwrite the operation – and almost yakked up my skull.

I quote, with emphasis added:

The propaganda potential of blogs — noted by former Bush adviser Dan Bartlett, who said many conservative sites “regurgitate exactly” what the administration tells them — isn’t lost on the U.S. government: in 2006 the military’s Joint Special Operations University explored the possibility of covertly paying prominent bloggers or training and promoting new bloggers to “pass the U.S. message.”…We shouldn’t be surprised that the Bush administration considered paying bloggers to tout its messages, writes Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report.

So let me get this straight – the blog that is paid to spout propaganda (and, let’s be honest, lied about it for a year), is writing about an academic exercise where someone proposes paying someone to spout opposing propaganda.

Now that’s meta.

Schmelzer also notes

While the document doesn’t specifically name friendly blogs it could seek to channel its message, it does note the roles of conservative blogs like The Drudge Report, Little Green Footballs, Townhall.com and Free Republic forums, without listing any centrist or left-leaning blogs.

So Schmelzer’s “standard of proof” is “innocent until mentioned by a couple of writers with track records, themselves, as left-leaning shills?”

We’ll keep that in mind.

UPDATE:  Maybe it’s an April Fool’s joke!

Thats’ gotta be it.  Not even the MNMon can talk that far out its’ ass…

Spring will eventually spring.  (My biggest regret was that I used the line “March in Minnesota; in like a lion, out like a cold, wet lion one week and a snowstorm too early).

And when it does, Black Thumbs like I will need the help of someone who knows how to do something with plants other than mulch the remains.

And so – since my college friend Jackie hasn’t posted in a year – the spot of “official gardenblog of Shot in the Dark goes “Growing Things“, run by my neighbor (the guy who lives the other way from Flash, who along with his wife actually runs a pretty mean garden over the summer himself; he gets plenty of practice sprouting conspiracy theories over the winter.  But I digress), Peter.

This year, my resolution is to make my customary salsa garden actually work.  Of course, along about mid-August I’ll have to find a good canning blog.

Dan Stover tipped his hand bright and early with the title of his blog – but he’s been cranking out good stuff, regularly, for over three years now, which on the blogosphere is an eternity.

His weekly “Best of the MOB” feature – which has apparently been running for a while – is a great introduction to some of the MOB blogs that might get lost in the shuffle. And he comes up with angles for things that I just don’t see from anyone else.

No, that’s a good thing; here’s one, on the Spitzer resignation’s “runway” impact:

For today, though, what was fasciniating was this picture on the home page of FoxNews.com this morning.

On the right is Mr. & Mrs. Spitzer, and on the left is Mr. & Mrs. Jim McGreevey (former NJ governor), as they appeared in their respective press conferences they held for their respective sex scandals.Do you think the DNC has their own scandal style consultant(s)? That could be a full time job for someone.

I can’t wait for Spitzer’s “I am a Pervert-American” speech.

Northern Alliance Wannabe? Well, getting on the air is a bolt-from-the-blue bit of serendipity, but Dan’s got quite a thing going on his own. And if you’re not reading it, you should be.

Last week, it occurred to me that I used to make a really religious point of linking out to people that I enjoy reading.  Back in about 2003, I was extremely conscientious about it; I was aware of the debt I owed to bigger blogs that had sent tons and tons of traffic my way earlier in this blog’s history, and put me where I am (which is pretty much the “C” list of blogs; Ed and Powerline and Lileks are obviously up on the “A” list, the household names; Michael Brodkorb and PZ Meyers are probably on the “B” list, big solid regional blogs that are key, nationally-known players within their niches.  Me?  I’m just a solid regional blog with 2,500 unique visitors a day.  Nothing to be ashamed about at all, since it’s about 2,490 more than I ever expected.

Of course, there’s a pack of usual suspects I link to constantly; KAR, TvM, Red, and a a bunch of others.  And the bigs, of course – HAir and the Powerguys and of course my NARN mates at Fraters, MDE and the Scholaz.

But there are a zillion other blogs out there, and it’d be really cool if a lot of them got a ton more traffic than they did, because they have something to say and a great way of saying it.

So I’ll be doing that for the next few weeks.  Just because.

Steve “Mister Furious” Perry – former journalist, now Soros minion and “editor” of the Minnesota Monitor, is sad.

He and his minions – in this case, Karl Bremer – tried to play the “public activism” game earlier this week (or, to be accurate, continued his decade-long obession with sliming his bete noire, Rep. Michele Bachmann). And as we all know, one of the wages of public activism is that the public gets their cut at you.

And Perry is trying to cut back. But now that he’s dealing with people who play the game better than he does, it’s just…not…working:

After a scheduled appearance by the pro-war veterans’ group Vets for Freedom

Well, there’s a gutless little slur for ya, right outta the gate!

“Pro-war?” Guess Perry hasn’t read David Bellavia’s book, or heard the guy speak. Simple fact; there’s nobody on earth more anti-war, as a concept and as a fact, than someone who’s spent time in combat. Bellavia is no GOP stooge; his book is pretty forthright about his own beliefs, as well as those of his fellow grunts (he talks with admiration about one of his squad’s fire-team leaders, a Polish-American who hated Bush and Rumsfeld with a passion that might yet land him a Soros stipend of his own).

Pro-war? Tell it to Bellavia’s face.

The websites Look True North and Minnesota Majority posted letter generators for writing to Bremer that include his photograph and, for a time, included his home addresses and home and work phone numbers as well. (Cached screen grab with personal data removed here.)

And True North removed that information almost immediately.

(And yeah, I condemn anyone who threatened Karl Bremer, assuming it happened – which is a hell of a lot more than Bremer would do for me or anyone who’d ever spoken out against him, I guarantee you.  I believe that people should be able to separate their activism and their private life; I’ve respected people on that count pretty religiously; Karl Bremer’s associates have not).

On Tuesday evening, right-wing KTLK-FM talk host Jason Lewis had the following exchange with a caller (emphasis added):…

Jason Lewis: I don’t lead a jihad against individuals unless they happen to be in the public arena. Of course, you could make the argument this guy’s now in the public arena. But if citizens are truly fed up with a small minority of socialist kooks in Stillwater, led by this Karl Bremer character who’s got a bizarre obsession with Michele Bachmann, I can’t be held accountable for what citizens might come up with. If you want to let this guy know you think he’s a bum, that’s up to you. I’m just saying that people ought to know his name, because he’s the guy, the ringleader, in Veterans for Peace and all this, that literally are censoring veterans.

Yep.

So – so what?

We continue the transcription:

Lewis: Yeah, right. Well, the problem with these protesters–the problem they’ve got is, they entered the public arena…Karl Bremer has been out there putting his name in the papers in his letters to the editor bashing Michele Bachmann. So he is now a public person, and hence he’s going to take the slings and arrows just like he hands them out. Long overdue, to be sure.

And again – so what?

Mr. Perry: Is Jason wrong?

Is Karl Bremer – a very frequent source and sometime contributor to Perry’s propaganda mill, as well as a high-profile contrib to Perry’s ex-gig, the Daily Mole – not a public figure? Is his public involvement in the stifling of Vets for Freedom’s appearance somehow off-limits?

Why? (Preferably in terms other than “because we really really want it to be”?

I mean, Bremer likes to dish out the abuse. Not that I advocate abuse (to say nothing of Bremer’s brand of context-mangling hackery), but can’t he take it?

If so, then why is he mixing it up in public? And why is Steve Perry breathlessly repeating his “reporting” as fact?

I phoned KTLK, a Clear Channel station, intending to ask program director Steve Versnick if this harangue fits the station’s programming policies. He has not yet returned the call. If and when he does, I’ll update with his response.

Well, I can’t speak for Steve Versnick. If I were Jason Lewis’ boss (and Clear Channel could do, and has done, worse), though, my response might be something like…:

Mitch Berg, Program Director: Steve? Bubbie? What’s the matter? You and your little website and its little clacque of hangers-on wanna be activists! You’re all fair game! I mean, if someone threatens you, call the friggin’ cops, and I’ll have your back! But if you think that the rules change just because your pal wants to do his sliming under cover of the Democrat Underground hive, you’re sadly mistaken.

Have a nice day!

Which is a lot nicer than my first draft, “If you find something here that isn’t strictly covered by the First Amendment, then go pound sand up your ass, crybaby”.

Here’s hoping.

It’s been a crazy week.

No, I know – it’s a crazy week for everyone. It always is. Among the urban, urbane, working-guy’n-gal set, every week is set to puree, these days. If people aren’t constantly complaining about being too busy and too swamped, other people wonder if you’re abusing Xanax or something. But suffice to say it’s been worse that most; most of it “not good”, none of it catastrophic. One of those “not red-letter” weeks, let’s just say, the kind that make me look forward to biking-to-work season, which opens (come hell or high water) next week for me.

But Mr. Dilettante notes something that I, and a lot of local bloggers, missed covering this past week; Senator Coleman announced his candidacy on Wednesday.

Local center-right bloggers were muted in their coverage:

I wasn’t especially worried about missing the event, since I figured that other bloggers would be there and would write about the event in detail. The ever-reliable Michael Brodkorb was there of course and there’s substantial coverage of the event over at MDE, as you’d suspect. But as yesterday spread into today, I started to notice something. Many of the other prominent center-right voices in the Minnesota blogosphere hadn’t written anything about the event, either. Nothing from Powerline. Mitch Berg was otherwise occupied. AAA hadn’t weighed in. No barking from the Freedom Dogs. Not a peep at Anti-Strib. Bupkis at TvM. And most notably, nothing at True North.

I’d chalk it up to a couple of things:

1. Most of us center-right bloggers – not having a Soros-like sugardaddy – have to work day jobs. Coleman’s announcement came amid a very busy work day; perfect timing for the dead-tree and broadcast media news cycle, bad for a guy who’s gotta get to meetings and deliver stuff. I sent my regrets to Coleman’s press people, who – I have to say it – have done a great job at reaching out to center-right bloggers this past year. Kudos to them.
2. Some center-right bloggers – the ones farther to the right on the continuum – are upset at some of Norm’s votes. Norm is not a pure movement conservative; he is a consummate pragmatist, as befits someone who ran a highly liberal city for eight years as a conservative DFLer against a hostile majority, and had to win election against not just Paul Wellstone, but his memory borne into eternal hagiography by the swooniest mob since the Beatles played Shea Stadium. Norm is not the perfect conservative; he is, however, good enough on all issues, and leads the pack on a number of issues, most notably shining a light on the cockroach den on the East River, the UN. But for Senator Coleman, “Oil For Food” would be just another Texaco marketing promotion. He’s generally right on the war, mostly right on spending, generally on the ball on judges; against that, I’ll forgive ANWR and his few other not-quite-conservative miscues.

So while I was remiss in not covering the Senator’s announcement, let me make it perfectly clear; I am fired up for Norm, and I’m going to do everything in my meager power to keep Norm in the Senate.

Mr. D:

As bloggers we’re all independent actors — despite what some people would have you believe, there’s no “ScaifeNet” or “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” afoot. We all make independent, idiosyncratic judgments concerning what we write about. And there have been some interesting local stories in the last few days, including the controversy at Forest Lake High School and the light bulb bill that Rep. Bachmann introduced, among other things. In all of that, Norm seems to have gotten lost. I’m not sure what it means, but the apparent lack of interest in Coleman’s event must mean something. And it would seem to be a good idea for Norm’s campaign people to see if they can ascertain the larger meaning.

Well, there’s no larger meaning at Shot In The Dark. D’s right, of course; this week was a mad blender of breaking news, and – events aside – while Norm’s announcement is important, it was hardly “news”; I don’t think anyone woke up Tuesday morning wondering if the Senator was going to bow out of the race.

But let nobody misinterpret my silence; this blog and the voter behind it supports Norm Coleman. I support him against the DFL’s nominee (I’m rooting for Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer!), and would do so against anyone the DFL could or would conceivably put in the race. While I differ from Norm on a few things – and tell him so, and tell you, via this blog, as well – Minnesota has had no better Senator in the two decades I’ve spent in this state; if Minnesota Republicans screw that up because of the odd ANWR vote, we’ll all be the poorer – literally and figuratively – for it.

Go, Norm!

The other day, I read Andy Birkey’s piece in the MNMon about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s preference for appearing on conservative and Christian media outlets.  I responded by inviting a group of liberal politicians – Senator Klobuchar, candidate Franken, Reps. Ellison and McCollum, mayor Rybak and Joel Kramer Dane Smith – to appear either on the NARN or, via email interview, in this blog.

Some commenters responded “do you honestly think you’re in the same league as MPR or WCCO?”  And to be honest, there were two answers to that question.

When it comes to the quality of the interviews – a level of incisive civility and an aim toward getting actual content from an interview, as opposed to plate-throwing or button-pushing – Ed and I are as good as anyone out there.

But the commenters’ question, and that answer, really miss the point.  Each of these politicans represents (or, in Franken’s case, wants to represent) people of all political and social stripes.  Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum – like Rep. Bachmann – represent districts where large, significant minorities disagree with them, and  have tough questions for them.  The questions deserve answers.  And if a representative won’t face people who have civilly-placed but incisive questions, then can it be fairly said they’re even trying to represent everyone?

So if it’s fair to try to take a whack at Rep. Bachmann for ducking out on an unfriendly, biased media (and let’s do be honest, here; after a couple of decades of Morgan Grams and Alan Fine hatchet-jobbery, it’s a fair cop), then it is certainly fair to wonder why Minnesota’s other elected officials won’t return to the favor (to a media outlet that opposes them, but has, unlike the Strib and Almanac and WCCO, a reputation for fairness and civility and sticking to the facts).

Oh, yeah – so far, I’ve heard back from only one of my invitees.  Since arrangements are still underway, I won’t let it slip just yet, but let’s just say this person is not an elected official.

As to the rest?  Well, I’ll give it a week.