Exhibit 1:  Margaret from Anti-Strib (among others) takes on Tracy’s infamous “Dirt Worshipping Heathens” post, and does the issue justice.

Exhibit 2:  As opposed to local (?) leftyblogger “Ragweed”, who rants like a delusional toddler who didn’t get the X-Box he wanted.

Anonymous leftybloggers with big mouths .  Whoop-di-doo.  Been there, done that, watched most of ’em (Daddypants, Kevin McKay, Rush Limbaughtomy) disappear in clouds of teeth-clenched dyspepsia.

I’m still here.  They’re all gone.

Back in 2004, there was a flood of new center-right blogs in the region.  I called it the “Class of ’04“.  Some amazing talent came out onto the blogging market back then.  It was a great time to be a blogger. 

But blogging – especially blogging by yourself – can be a pretty lonely, trying thing.  Some of us – Ed would be a great example – do it because they can earn something of a living at it.  Others – the local left’s lonesome voice of reason Flash, and the great Leo the Psycmeister, who is perhaps the most criminally-undertrafficked blog in the MOB – keep their work load in check by keeping the blog in careful perspective.  Others – me – do it because we’re crazy and/or we love doing it. 

But it’s not for everyone.  The mortality rate among the “Class of ’04” bloggers – while much lower than among the blogosphere in general (where about 99.5% of blogs expire after about three posts) has been high. 

Or has it?

One of the phenomena I’m happiest about lately is the amalgamation of so many of the smaller center-right bloggers into some of my favorite group-blogs. 

• Kool-Aid Report has added The Analog Kid and the Iron Matron (both of whom are well-known and exceptional bloggers, whose real identies are as closely held as Joe Tucci’s, er, was). 
• Anti-Strib up to 17 writers, now. 
• True North – my other blog – has a deep, deep roster.
• Freedom Dogs has absorbed quite a few – Diamond Dog, Lassie, Mannske, Guy – great local bloggers.
• And now, word comes that Truth v. The Machine has added Ricard from Lazy Gopher Pachyderm (in addition to Pat Shortridge).

So it looks like it’s going to be a fun year!

Not only does the new local deep-lefty-pocket-financed “Daily Mole” provide a shoddy knock-off of “citizen journalism”…

…it provides and even shoddier knockoff of our own regular (some might say chronic) commenter Angryclown.

Pathetic.  Even my commenters are better than the Mole’s “regular” contribs.

It truly is better here.

Ken “Avidor” Weiner is apparently using the Strib’s “Buzz.mn” to carry on his obsession with trying to “smear” regional conservatives with the most tenuous possible “guilt” by association. 

Let’s see how many times the former Screw Magazine “art director” bobbles the “facts”:

Time Magazine named Powerline Blog of the Year in 2004. Perhaps as an indicator of how low the GOP has sunk,

Well, there’s one. True North is utterly unconnected with the Minnesota GOP.  Indeed, distance from the party is enshrined in the “Manifesto” I wrote for the site. 

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its publication to spread lies?

Powerline’s Scott Johnson has been reduced to blogging with Tom “Swiftee” Swift, one of the nastiest, sleaziest bloggers in Minnesota’s political blogosphere.

Tom is nasty – but as he’s never actually worked for Screw magazine, that accusation comes across as a bit…disingenuous?

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its official blog to carry on his vendettas? 

 If you have spent any time surfing Minnesota’s political blogs, you will have come across the nasty comments of MOB troll Tom Swift, alias “Swiftee”. Swiftee’s modus operandi is to make the blogosphere as creepy and scary as this picture he posted of himself on his blog.

Weiner then goes on, essentially, to whinge about how sad Swiftee’s cartoons (along with the fact that Swiftee is generally regarded as a better cartoonist than Weiner) make him.

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use their house blog as his therapeutic sounding board?

I, like a lot of regional B- and C-list conservative blogs, have noticed a bit of a traffic slump this past few months.

Looking at my server logs over the weekend I’m happy to say – the drought is over.

Must be an election coming on…

(Naturally, the holiday week kinda crunches that…)

Sitting in Dunn Brothers downtown.

Trying to get onto KoolAid Report:

Access to the page:

http://koolaidreport.blogspot.com

… has been denied for the following reason:

Weighted phrase limit exceeded.

You are seeing this error because what you attempted to access appears to contain, or is labeled as containing, material that has been deemed inappropriate.

If you have any queries contact your ICT Co-ordinator or Network Manager.

Note to Dunn’s:

That is all.

It is so good to have Fishsticks back blogging. 

Over at TrueNorth, he tackles last week’s Anti-Strib flap:

For the record, it’s ignorant, and in the character of “dump” blogs, it clouds an issue more than enlightens it. It is more embarrassing to the conservative audience it would support than to the people it attacks or the liberal left.

While as I noted last week I think Eberly has learned a lot from this dustup (more than any comparable leftyblogger would under similar circumstances; when was the last time you saw  a regional leftyblogger get called on the carpet by his own fellow bloggers for an ethical or moral lapse, much less actually acknowledge the problem the way Tracy did?), Westover agrees about the upshot:

Racist? I tend to reserve the “R” word for people that take action based on race, but the post certainly violates the conservative principle of judging individuals and not aggregating people by ethnicity or some other characteristic.

 Not to speak for either Westover or Eberly, but if you’re a first-principles conservative, that is among the most damning indictments of racism, casual or otherwise; that it treats people as groups and categories (to say nothing of wrongly) rather than as individuals.

There’s a discussion to be had there, naturally.

Of course, no discussion is needed about the left’s response; Fishsticks loads his cannon with grapeshot and lowers them to deck level in re Karl Bremer’s vacuous attack on all regional conservative bloggers and, incidentally, Eberly:

As to the responses that included my name, they are worthy of the original post – they do the same thing, aggregate everyone associated with the MOB with an ignorant idea that, in fact, violates conservative principles.
 
If anyone were interested in really busting the Anti-Strib post, he might have started a conversation about the Iroquois constitution.

Read the whole thing.  Welcome Fishsticks back.

And marvel at how much more lopsided the intellectual battle among the bloggers in this town just got.

…for the battle royale, as it were, with King “King” Banaian, I’ve decided it’s time to let some other old feuds die natural deaths.

More later.

Maybe.

I think it’s great news – for Republicans.

Jay Reding agrees, I think:

They’re apparently going to “balance” Kos with a right-of-center blogger, yet to be announced. Then again, I doubt anyone would want the job of “balancing” Kos unless it’s by giving him medication. I’m not sure of a writer whose name doesn’t rhyme with Fan Molter that even comes close to the level of pure ideological spite and relentless cheerleader-ism that Kos spews on a daily basis.

Then again, it’s probably good news for the Republicans in the race—the more exposure people like Kos get, the more people see the true face of the Democratic Party.

I may just start posting Kos’ kolumns prominently, every chance I get.

Mary Katherine Ham wraps up from Vegas:

That may be all I can tell you without divulging anything top secret and/or embarrassing. You know what they say about Vegas…it stays.

Developing…  Hmmmm.

A source at the Monitor (whose permission I don’t yet have to go on the record) confirms; Jim Boyd is leaving.

I link to a lot of people on my blogroll.

A link doesn’t necessarily imply complete agreement on every – or any – issue.    I link to David Strom, Fraters Libertas, Kool Aid Report and Ed Morrissey even though I’m not against the North Star line, am not Catholic, ignore the Packers (to say nothing of Notre Dame, Hockey and parrots) and never cared much for Iron Maiden, and oppose smoking bans.

Indeed, I link to the likes of Blanked Out, Blog of the “Moderate” Left, MNSpeak and Powerliberal even though I don’t agree on much with any of them.

So let’s take a brief – and final – run through last month’s week’s dismal little flap.

• I’m pretty loathe to call someone “racist” frivolously.  When you apply it to a person, it implies a pretty broad character judgement – that, deep down in the pit of their gut, they believe other races are inferior to their own, down to the DNA level, and deserve to be subjugated, oppressed or eliminated.  It’s a serious accusation; its collateral implications involve Slavery and Auschwitz.
• Tracy Eberly’s piece last week last month, which the local Sorosphere has been tossing about like a bunch of poo-flinging monkeys, had some background – an obnoxious commenter – and an underlying point (not all cultures are equally good, and other cultures can and should be criticized as freely as our own).  Observing this helps explain the piece, I think…
• …but doesn’t excuse the fact that Eberly didn’t just push some rhetorical hot buttons about which Native Americans are legitimately sore – he jumped on them wearing big clunky boots.  He said some things that, depending on your point of view, one could call “dumb”, “insensitive” (yeah, like a real conservative is going to use that term) or “racist”. 
• I distinguish between “saying racist things” and “being a racist”.  (Your mileage may vary, but then I didn’t really ask anyone else’s opinion).
• I don’t disagree with Michael Brodkorb for whacking Anti-Strib from his blogroll.  He makes his reasons pretty clear in this post – and given his position, I can’t say as I fault his reasoning.
• I don’t even blame the local Sorosphere for piling on.  That’s the way the “game” is played.  Que sera sera (or as John Kerry would say, Que seared…seared).
• But Karl Bremer was deeply disingenuous (and playing to the Daily Mole’s audience’s ignorance) to turn Eberly’s article into a smear of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB).  Nobody expects anything but skulking yellow hackery from Bremer, as worthless and yellow a “writer” as exists, an embarassment even to “Dump Bachmann”.  But neither does one expect “Drinking Liberally” (the left-of-center social group) to enforce any standards of behavior on the local Sorosphere, because, duuuuuude, they’re just a bunch of lefties who get together to drink!  So why is the MOB – whose charter is, if anything, less politically motivated than DrinkLib – suddenly accountable for its members’ opinions?   The MOB strives to be apolitical, and I have dozens of email invitations to local leftybloggers (and apolitical bloggers) to prove it.  The MOB is mostly center-right and/or non-political bloggers, of course; my theory is that too many regional leftybloggers are afraid to be seen in a  room with people they disagree with, but I don’t know.  At any rate, there is no enforcement arm to the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers; there is no MOB editorial board; the sole function of the MOB’s capi di tutti capi, Brian and Chad and King and I, is to call Terry Keegan and ask if it’s OK to invite 100 of our closest friends over to drink on a Saturday night.  The MOB  is a blogroll and two annual parties that are explicitly open to everyone who wants to show up.  And that means you, whether you’re Michael Brodkorb or Steve Perry for that matter.  The entire “when will the MOB police itself?” “argument” is akin to asking “when did you stop beating your wife”.  It’s a cowardly stawman set up (and supported) by yellow hacks with intent to obfuscate.
• When the likes of Karl Bremer and Steve Perry start demanding accountability from “Drinking Liberally”, or Flash’s “Drinking Moderately”, for the gaffes and offenses and beliefs of their attendees , maybe they’ll have earned the right to squawk be worth a listen.  But nobody’s demanding that accountability, because it’d be dumb; that’s not DL or DM’s purpose!  Declaring the MOB different is purely agenda-driven wishful thinking. 
• That being said, responding to this incident by claiming it’s “bowing to political correctness” to disapprove of the way Tracy expressed himself in his post – as claimed by several Anti-Strib supporters in Michael’s comment thread – is an evasion of responsibility.  Says me.  It’s something we expect, rightly, of the giggly fratboys and callow wannabees of the Sorosphere.  Man up and take your lumps.

I would never put a racist blog on my blogroll.  And I don’t think Tracy Eberly or Anti-Strib are “racist” in any sense that a victim of genuine racism (as opposed to agenda-flogging selective indignation) would recognize.  So they’ll remain on my blogroll; I’ll continue to support them – and hope and trust that they’ll express their views about race and culture a lot more artfully, if no less forthrightly.

As a friend, I’ll both agree with Tracy that our culture does have plenty to be proud of and is objectively better in balance for the vast majority of its people than most of the world’s other societies.  America, and the West that it leads and (with Britain) defined, eschews ritual genital mutilation, the stoning of gays, the lynching of adulterers, and…the list goes on.  Our language, unlike so many of the world’s tongues, doesn’t have different words for “human” that grow more derogatory the farther from “American” or “English” one gets.  Our society is far from perfect, but it strives to uphold not only the rights of women and social and cultural and ethnic minorities and has done more than any other society in history to atone for the wrongs of its own past than any other culture in history.  Tracy is right about this; I’d like him to express that point without pissing in Native Americans’ wheaties along the way, just for the sheer South-Park-olicious fun of it.

As a blogger who reads Anti-Strib (at the very least for Hot Telanovela Chick Friday) and supports the local center-right blog scene, I’ll criticize the offense – partly because actions DO have consequences to a principled conservative, and partly because I’d hate to see one of the Cities’ more prominent center-right group blogs get trashed for no good reason.  Anti-Strib has some good friends, some good writers (Badda, Kermit, and yes, Tracy) along with some notso-hotso ones (it’s Tracy’s party, he can invite who he wants), and above all some solid points to make.  Anti-Strib did yeoman work in exposing the casual, racist screedmongering of Minneapolis School Board member Chris Stewart and American Hot Sausage (which passed without a word from  Karl Bremer, and earned a flakky puff-piece from Steve Perry – even Eva Young covered that one); Anti-Strib makes a valuable contribution to the local blog scene, and will do so in the future.  They deserve (and have earned) both criticism and recognition; they also deserve, I think, the benefit of a doubt.

I’d hate to see Anti-Strib’s rep get shredded (or shredded further) over Tracy’s gaffe, or maybe worse, defending something that’s just not worth it.

You call it “Livid”.

We call it “laughing at you, not with you”.

(Sorry to be a grinch, but no linkylinky!)

…well, I did too.

‘Til I read Gary Miller’s testimony about the worst Wednesday night of his life:

13 years ago this evening I died. Well, sorta. My heart stopped a half-dozen times or so on the operating table and I had to be resuscitated each time.

Notes to self:

• Hug the kids extra-long tonight.
• Double-check my insurance.
• Never, ever get in a car driven by a TvM staffer.

…yes, I have been humming “Wasted Years” by Iron Maiden nonstop for the last couple of days…

KAR takes Dumpster “freelance journalist” Karl Bremer to the factual woodshed.

So, the Dumpster is a moron, and gets one more of these:

 

Nice try though.

Go over and read Foot’s vivisection of our old friend Karl.

Oh, and that fail also goes to Eric Black for his gatekeeping.

Black might have some ‘splainin’ to do.

Mr. Black; while I’m the last person who should tell you how to do your job as a reporter, as a general rule anyone involved with The Dump is about as reliable a source as a ferret on meth.

Yours in superior gatekeeping,

Mitch

KAR commemorates their third blog anniversary with a very special holiday video production.

So git on over there and wish ’em a happy birthday!

Sue Jeffers is not amused by T-Paw’s slip to the left:

OK Governor Pawlenty, we know you have jumped on the green band wagon. We got it.

 

We knew it with E-85, we knew it at the Governor’s Convention, we knew it with the Renewable Energy Bill, and we knew it with the Global Warming Mitigation Act. We heard you say loud and clear that global warming is “a huge and defining issue of our time.” We got it.

And it’s not just idle political chatter:

The cost to anyone who uses energy will be staggering.Conveniently ignoring the fact that there is nothing Minnesota could reasonably do which would noticeably impact the climate. In fact there is no proof that these proposals will affect global warming, positive or negative, even if every state in the nation, and every country in the world, adopted them.

I acknowledge that perfect is the enemy of good enough.  As a conservative, I’m keenly aware that politics is about crafting the most advantageous compromise you can manage.  Stomping ones’ feet and threatening to take your toys and go home if you can’t get a perfectly-conservative-enough candidate is a sign of immaturity, at least when it comes to making your politics matter in the real world. 

Still, our role is to push the conversation to the right.  And there’s a fair case to be made that TPaw needs that push. 

And Sue is pushing.

So Governor, hear this Conservative loud and clear: the defining moment will be when you find your backbone and lead and govern using conservative principles instead of supporting yet another invented liberal crisis. It would be much more effective if on your trip to the Arctic you would scope out the terrain and figure out the best spot to put the drilling rigs.

Strommie’s not thrilled either.

…I’m telling y’all to get out to the Weblog awards to vote for Sheila O’Malley in the Weblog Awards’ “Best Literary Blog” contest. 

Well, she’s not in this year – but my old friend/adversary Erik Hare (AKA “Transit Geek”) is, for his litblog.

So give it a read, and if you’re so inclined, vote away!

I’m not sure what to make of this odd admission:

We moved into our house last March. Two days ago I did my first batch of laundry.

Do you use fans, or do you have a sterno-fueled potpourri burner?

SCENE:  Mitch’s kids Bun and Zam are coming home from a day at school.

MITCH (props glasses up on bridge of nose as he reads newspaper at the kitchen table):  “How was school?”

BUN: “We learned a lot of stuff today…but…”

MITCH (Looks up): “But…?”

ZAM: “Well, it’s our teacher, Ms. Marty.  Some of the stuff she’s teaching us…”

MITCH: “Like what?”

BUN: “Well, for instance…[digs out paper from backpack]…in Literature this morning she taught us that Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the greatest poet of the British Romantic period….”

MITCH: “Well, she was rather prominent…”

BUN: “No, Dad – she said “Byron and Shelley were Browning’s beeyotches“. 

MITCH (nonplussed): “Hmmmm…well…”

ZAM: “And she told me that Lord of the Rings was a story Tolkein stole from a collective of Bolivian coffee plantation serfs”

MITCH (Wrinkling brow): “Well, that’s just…”

BUN: “And then in history, she told us that Thomas Jefferson cribbed the entire Declaration of Independence from a female slave’s knitted scarf, and that ‘womyn’ not only planned D-Day, but did all the fighting”.

MITCH: “Er…”

ZAM: “And then in phy ed, she told us that Billie Jean King was the real quarterback of the ’72 Cowboys, and that Roger Staubach was just a fabulist patriarchal conspiracy”

MITCH (takes deep breath): “OK, kids.  You know how I’ve explained to you that there are two types of feminists; real feminists, who believe that the goal is to make sure that all opportunities are open to women…”

BUN AND ZAM: “Like you”

MITCH: “Right.  And then the other kind, the kind that believes in making up some phony fantabulist history to give ‘womyn’ some kind of phony ‘self-esteem’ boost.

ZAM: “So that makes Ms. Marty…”

BUN: “The other kind?”

MITCH: “Well, I think there’s always a chance for people to change.  I mean, even I was a liberal once…”

BUN AND ZAM: “Oh, jeez, here he goes again”.

MITCH (Laughing): “I know, I know…”

ZAM: “OK – then, in journalism class, she told us to write ‘reviews’ of the next season of Scrubs, and a look back at the ’08 Presidential Election”.

MITCH: “But neither of those…has…er, happened yet…”

ZAM: “She says it doesn’t matter!”

BUN: “She also says “Minnesota Monitor” is rigorously independent”.

(Pause).

ALL: “Bwahahahahahahaahahahahahaaaaa!”

MITCH: “OK.  Let’s get ready for dinner…”

(And…Scene!)

Go over to Kool Aid Report and vote in the annual Mayor of the MOB election.

With incumbent Andy Aplikowski running a fairly low-key campaign (AKA “Throwing the Election”) and prior incumbent Doug Williams having disappeared, Hoffa-like, from sight (as in “getting kinda worried here”), it’s the most wide-open field since last year.  And the candidates are all good, except for Bobo the Chimp.

Voting is on through Friday; vote daily.  The front-runners right now are Tracy Eberle, Atomizer, King Banaian and…the aforementioned chimp.

(This blog only endorses candidates that shamelessly pander to me – at least in the MOB polls)

Cindy points us to the latest incarnation of Project Valor IT – a “Soldiers Angels” production. The goal is to raise money to provide assistive technology to wounded servicepeople.
The fundraiser brings a bit of friendly inter-service rivalry to the table; although all the money raised goes into the same pot, and all goes to support deployed troops and their families.

Me? Well, I’m from North Dakota. We are a maritime people in NoDak; the salt water is in our veins. And many is the North Dakotan, stranded on the drift prairie in mid-blizzard, who’s looked in relief to see a Coast Guard chopper flaring out to pull them to safety, or a Navy Snow-Cat hoving across the drifts with food, fuel and water, the skipper on the bridge barking orders down the voice-tubes to the helmsman.

Also, my twin uncle was a submariner. And the Navy is behind.

So here’s a link to the “Navy” donation page (and a list of the Navy team)
Anchors aweigh, and let’s turn it out for the skimmers, bubbleheads, flyboys and coasties!

UPDATE: The code screws up Firefox. I’m going to put the counter code in a separate Valour-IT page (on my right menu, or here), and provide a link to the “Navy” page.

To paraphrase the Everly Bros and Linda Ronstadt – I’ve been cheated, been mistreated; in addition, I’ve been put down and (coincidentally) pushed ’round; I almost hesitate to add that I’ve been lied to and made blue. With a nod to Stephen Stills, I’ve been aro-o-o-ound the world, looking for that…girl (I think Stills is singing “Mormon”, but I’m sure that’s wrong) .While I have not been (a la Charlene) to Nice or the Isles of Greece, with their attendant yachts and champagne I have had shotgunned Summit on a pontoon boat on Minnetonka. With apologies to Ms. Smyth and Messrs. Lennon and McCartney, I’m neither a warrior nor an eggman. But I will lay claim the high-and-low-searching Seeker of Pete Townsend fame.

And the thing I seek at the moment is one bit of knowledge. To wit: what does “Pwn3d” mean? I’m assuming it’s the past tense regular verb form of “Pwn” (To Pwn. I Pwn, you pwn, he/she/it pwns…), which only highlights the limitations of grammar for analyzing intent.

Anyway – while I have no idea what the state of “pwn” means, it’s been brought to my attention that I apparently am…it. Whatever it is.
Searching for clues (or, alternatively, “clw3z”), I went to my email, where I saw a note from a correspondent:

He notes that his predecessor at *giggle* Screw went on to the NY times…

And he went on to….

…get fired from the 4th most-read freebie rag in Minneapolis.

It’s becoming clear.

Pwn: v. to be proven less pathetic than the subject of ones’ narrative.

I think I know all I need to now.

And with this, all discussion of “cartoonist” Ken Avidor is over. Turn out the lights.

CORRECTION:  Everly Bros, not Buddy Holly.  Blah.

(more…)

As they teach (I’m told) in law school: “When the law is against you, argue facts.  When the facts are against you, argue law.  When both are against you, argue like hell”.

The blogging corollary might be “when the facts make you look like an idiot and your every attempt at a response looks like a more-and-more desperate attempt to change the subject because the entire world is starting to think you’re a giggly self-absorbed little jagoff, you should quit before you get too far behind, if it’s not already too late”.

Which, with Foot on the case, it pretty much already is.

(more…)