When I saw the lefty blogs en phalanx crowing about the factoid that a survey of the military showed them giving to Obama by a 6:1 margin over Mac, I sat up.

Wow. Gotta check this out.

Zack Stephenson of MNPublius’ tone was a lot like all the rest of the leftyblogs that wrote on the subject (hmmm):

I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the party of the military:

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain…

Wow. Given that Bush crushed Kerry in troop donations (and votes; 4:1 with active duty troops, 3:1 with reserves) four years ago, that’d be big news, if it’s entirely true.

Of course, that’s the “if” you always have to run down when it’s “news” spread simultaneously through the Sorosphere.

Allahpundit:

The left will happily run this up the flagpole, just as Ron Paul’s supporters did last year, despite the fact there are so many variables in play that no one’s quite sure what the actual significance of it is. Is it evidence that the troops favor withdrawal? Evidence that the military’s trending left? Evidence that Obama’s supporters are more enthusiastic than McCain’s? None of the above? All of the above?

To really know, we’d have to know a couple of things; a big one would be “sample size”, the number of troops and contributions being sampled in the “Study”.

And we don’t know that. Remember that fact. We’ll come back to it shortly.
We do know a couple of things. Back to Allahpundit:

But again — what is it, precisely, that we’re noting? The fact that Paul does disproportionately well among the same group probably means it’s a war thing; it may be that there’s a core group of troops who are passionately opposed to extending the occupation for whatever reason and they’re willing to donate to candidates to achieve that end. That group was likely too small in 2004 to help Kerry given how recent the invasion still was, but after five years it’s grown along with the rest of the anti-war tide among the electorate. Evidence, then, that most troops want out? Maybe! Except … the data doesn’t specify whether the donations came mostly from Iraq or were spread out around the globe, and interestingly, the one branch where McCain leads Obama in contributions is the one most likely to see the hardest action — the [US Marine] Corps. Beyond that, the would-be McCain soldier-donor has a hurdle to clear on his way to his checkbook that the Paul and Obama donor doesn’t. By kicking in to Maverick, he’s making it marginally more likely that he’ll continue to be deployed in the field and away from his family in the future. Even if he agrees with McCain’s foreign policy, thinks we ought to finish the job in Iraq, and is willing to continue serving bravely and well to that end, it’s asking a lot to ask him to pay for the privilege.

They got their anecdotes, we have ours.

Oh, wait. Remember when I said to remember the fact that we don’t know the sample size?

That’s not exactly true:

Of the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors and airmen currently deployed around the entire world, 134 — about the size of a company or a handful of platoons — have contributed to the Obama campaign. This is blockbuster news, folks.

Here, let me use the original sensational headline instead:

Troops Deployed Abroad Give 6:1 to Obama

Anecdotes, data…whatever. Obama Fever is obviously blitzkrieging through the ranks.

The Sorosphere: Distrust and Verify.

My friend Sloan Skjellerup is finally blogging; “A Gal’s Gotta Vent“.

And lordy, does she ever. I hope she gets around to writing half of the stories I’ve heard from her…

It’s no wonder I hear banjos when I drive into Isanti County.

A guy walks into the Arkansas Democratic Party office and shoots the party chairman.

This is a ghastly crime; the shooter was killed by police in a shootout later in the day, which is probably what should have happened.

This blog condemns all shooting at people that isn’t in legal self-defense.

Of course, when something like this happens, you can count on the idiot fringe (which is the lower 80%) of the Twin Cities’ leftysphere to try to spin it.

From the Mississippifarian – yet another anonymous, unaccountable Twin Cities leftyblog obviously written by a deranged nutcase – we get this explanation:

Let me make a wild and irresponsible guess: this asshole is a dittohead. Nothing else about him will be noteworthy other than the fact that he’s obviously some kind of loser who takes Rush seriously when Rush jokes about killing liberals.

Oh, obviously!

Except, y’know, it’s pretty likely not true:

Police said they don’t know the motive for the 51-year-old suspect, whose name has not been released. However, they said moments after the shooting, he pointed a handgun at the building manager at the nearby the Arkansas Baptist headquarters. He told the manager “I lost my job,” said Dan Jordan, a Baptist convention official.

I don’t believe Rush Limbaugh has ever joked about killing Baptists, now, has he?

Oh, but since we’re talking about “climates of hate” caused by other people exercising their First Amendment rights, “he” might wanna have a word with some of the genuinely hateful people among or descending upon us. Presuming “Mississippifarian” isn’t more interested in painting those peoples’ toenails.

Twin Cities’ leftysphere: Yeah, ya got another winner. Keep up the great work.

And Mississippifarian, whoever you are? Seek help.

UPDATE:  To be fair, it’s not just gutless anonybloggers.

The Minnesoros “Independent” not only glorifies vandalism, but giggles at the creation of an atmosphere of hate!

Somebody painted “Get Out Phascists” on the Grain Belt sign by the Hennepin Avenue bridge – one of Northeast Minneapolis’ major landmarks, other than Kramaczuks, anyway.  (G.O.P.!  Get it?  Hahahaha!)

Was the Mindy’s response:

• Anger at the vandalism of private property?
• Dismay at the climate of thuggish hate in which some Twin Citians are stewing against Republicans who are in town to participate in democracy, protected by the same Constitution that protects their right to print and assemble?
• A giggly, “neutral”-to-tacitly-approving piece that says “hey, it’s vandalism, but we approve without saying it in as many words”

Oh, what do you think?  Read it for yourself, and ask yourself “if someone had spraypainted DEPORT FAGS on the sign, or ABORTION IS MURDER on a Planned Parenthood clinic, would they, or any Twin Cities’ lefty, be all giggly-“neutral” about this kind of thuggish vandalism?”

It’d almost be fun to find out, except for – I dunno – the fact that I condemn crime, even crime I (in the case of abortion, not killing gays, for the benefit of those of you who sproing convenient and loud doubts about other peoples’ ethics when you get the opportunity) agree with.

People sometimes ask me “Mitch, how does the “Fairness Doctrine” work?”

And I respond “Very badly, if real-life experience counts for anything”.

While the notional idea behind the doctrine is to force “balance” in programming, it really works one of two ways:

• As it did with about 90% of talk stations before 1987 – by eschewing political or remotely controversial talk, or…
• …as in the example linked above, mixing conservative and liberal programming. Which fails because the liberal programming (as well as some of the conservative shows in the example above) is pretty dreadful, unmarketable stuff.

And that’s not even the worst news: the doctrine will likely put a damper on all alternative media, including this blog.

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks.
The commissioner, a 2006 President Bush appointee, told the Business & Media Institute the Fairness Doctrine could be intertwined with the net neutrality battle. The result might end with the government regulating content on the Web, he warned. McDowell, who was against reprimanding Comcast, said the net neutrality effort could win the support of “a few isolated conservatives” who may not fully realize the long-term effects of government regulation.

They’re going to have to smart up mighty fast.

“I think the fear is that somehow large corporations will censor their content, their points of view, right,” McDowell said. “I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy, which by the way would have a big First Amendment problem.”

“Then, whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ which won’t be called that – it’ll be called something else,” McDowell said. “So, will Web sites, will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?”

On the one hand, it sounds stretchy. On the other hand, liberals have been unable to make the faintest dent in talk radio, and their strength on blogs is largely on hive sites heavily supported by the likes of George Soros and his various sockpuppet non-profits; surely they would like to save a buck or two and have government, especially an Obama government heavily in their debt, to “level the playing field” for them.

“The Fairness Doctrine has not been raised at the FCC, but the importance of this election is in part – has something to do with that,” McDowell said. “So you know, this election, if it goes one way, we could see a re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine. There is a discussion of it in Congress. I think it won’t be called the Fairness Doctrine by folks who are promoting it. I think it will be called something else and I think it’ll be intertwined into the net neutrality debate.”

The other “rationales” for the “Fairness” Doctrine – scarcity of media (in a world where it takes two minutes to start a blog, and digital radio is about to explode the number of frequencies available), corporate censorship of liberal views (which explains why a black maria came for Keith Olberman and why Bill Maher is breaking rocks on a chain gang in Mississippi) and public interest (in a world where media of all types are orders of magnitude more ubiquitous than they were 21 years ago) – don’t stand up to even silly scrutiny.

So I guess the order of business is to figure out which leftybloggers I have to add to the staff to balance out Roosh and I.

Given the quality of leftyblog writing in this town, I’ll probably have to make it like five or six of ’em.

One:  Tom Swift and Mark Gisleson discussion the fine-point pros and cons of Hayek over a bottle of Chilean Pinot Grigio.

Two: The Cubs winning the World Series.

Three:  Any of the Twin Cities’ deep-pocketed leftyblogs showing the faintest shred of knowledge about economics.

UPDATE:  Oops.  Wrote too soon.

Chalk it up to basic economics of supply and demand.

Americans are driving less, and the price of gas keeps falling.

Unmentioned:  The psychological boost of the Republican push to drill and build refineries.

Hey, I did specify “faint shred”, right?

When I cast my first-ever conservative vote – for Ronald Reagan, in 1984 – I didn’t tell anyone. Part of it was that the whole conversion from mushy-left to right was so very recent. Part of it was that I was still feeling my way around an unfamiliar place.

And a big part was that I really just didn’t want to be associated with “those” conservatives.

In the media of the day, “out” conservatives were pretty much portrayed as smug fundamentalist televangelists, warmongering caricatures or malthusian skinflints. I edited a college newspaper at the time, and our syndication service – the “Campus News Service” – fed us a constant stream of anti-conservative, anti-Republican propaganda in written and cartoon form, all of it based on the three stereotypes above and the notion, constantly hammered in story after story, cartoon after cartoon, that President Reagan was

a) a doddering buffoon
b) a warmongering psychopath
c) both.

I got over it.

I graduated, moved to the Twin Cities – and it got worse. The media of the day ranged from left-leaning (it was the golden age of Jim Klobuchar; Nick Coleman was just getting started as a columnist) to falling-over left. Just before I started my old KSTP talk show, I remember reading a piece in the City Pages about some counselor/”artist” type in some political action group saying – unchallenged – “liberalism is the only intellectually acceptable philosophy”.

The attitude one perceived could have fairly been called “contemptuous” against conservative people and ideas.

And on the issues? Well, it was at KSTP in 1987, in a discussion on handgun control, where I first heard the old chestnut “I think people who think they need guns are…[brief pause as a verbal wink and nudge] compensating for something…”. It is, of course, the standard line for anti-gunners who want to believe they’re bringing the forces of soft science to bear against their opponents without actually understanding any. And it is nothing if not contemptuous. And it’s not the only issue where conservative substance has been met for decades with ignorant contempt.

To sum up: Twenty years ago, the contempt for conservatives was everywhere.

One thing that was not everywhere was avenues for response. This was before the market drove talk radio to the right. This was before conservatives had any written outlet, short of the National Review and the odd token George Will or Cal Thomas column set into the OpEd page like an exhibit at a zoo. The Strib’s letters to the editor, then as now, published only the most carefully-bowdlerized selection of conservative opinion (seemingly selected for sounding the least coherent, at times)

Today, of course, it’s a different story. Conservatives have voices – and those voices pretty well crush the opposition (which is why the Democrats are talking about bringing back the “Fairness” doctrine). Conservatives have outlets, and they’ve become influential out of all proportion to their size, which is why George Soros and his deep-pocketed friends are trying to buy a share of the blogosphere; it’s not really working (which is why the left has already tried to regulate blog content).

At any rate, in the last twenty years – and especially the past five years or so – people on the left, especially people who remember what life was like back when the conservative in the street only got to speak at the bar and around the table and every couple of years at the polls have had to learn that there really are more than one side to an argument.

The masthead of Charlie Quimby’s blog reads “How Can People Disagree And Still Build a Decent World?”; it’s a good question, one that I ask a lot in this blog and – rather more often – in personal conversation. It is important, and not merely because I’m a conservative with a mother who thinks Jane Fonda is a reactionary.

Charlie poked a little fun last week at the selection of Republicans getting credentials at the Convention next month. The common thread he found: “From Ladies Logic to Grizzly Groundswell to Pair O’Dice you’ll find at least one thing in common: a fairly strong contempt for liberals.”
Over the weekend and still on the subject (having gotten some pushback from a couple of the bloggers he’d names), he asked:

It is possible to separate personal relationships and politics. The success of any free political system depends on it. But over the past 20 years or so, it seems to be happening less and less. Contempt — not just philosophical disagreement — has been ratcheted up and real tolerance for human differences over policies is given the sort of smirking pro forma observance we see between Hannity and Colmes…

The difference, I suggest, is that over the past twenty years contempt and ridicule (and the guys behind their respective curtains, ignorance and fear) have become two-way streets. There’s not more contempt and ridicule; you can just see it. And if you’re a Twin Cities’ liberal, you can see it aimed at you for the first time.
You don’t have to read Nick Coleman or Lori Sturdevant or Brian Lambert all that terribly long to realize that Minnesota liberals of a certain age just aren’t used to being questioned, much less criticized, to say nothing of being the objects of contempt. I’m going to venture that not one of them, growing up in acceptably-lefty households, coming up through a left-leaning academic establishment, and working a career in left-leaning newsrooms, has ever heard someone say “I don’t know why people need pay-equity laws, unless they’re compensating for something, nyuk nyuk”.

Or bloggers and their invisible moonbat/wingnut friends. Which is why here I try to make those exchanges real and open, aimed at understanding rather than refuting the other.

Contempt is the tip on the iceberg of ignorance and – toward the bottom – hatred. I try to avoid it, and seek out conversation with the rare liberal blogger who’s not too stupid and sodden with fake intellectual entitlement…

…oh, crap. Let me start over.

Contempt is the junk food of rhetoric; it’s cheap, easy, and sometimes all you have in the cupboard. It’s easy to say “I don’t use it”; everyone knows better. There are times when it’s the easiest way to respond to the gaffes and slights and sins of the “other” side. It was the same thing twenty years ago; if Hubert Humphrey and Ronald Reagan are the respective egos of the left and right, “guns are compensating for something” and “liberalism is a mental disorder” are the respective ids. And we all balance these in different ways.

At some point, contempt for ideas and values becomes contempt for a group becomes contempt for a person, as the bones in mass graves the world over attest.

True.

But a lot of things have changed in the last decade or two. Liberals in the Twin Cities are having some inevitable growing pains realizing that there is more than one point of view in this world (just like conservatives in Austin Texas and Chapel Hill North Carolina have been having to do).
It’s just all out in the open now.

The only real question now is how people deal with it – a question people have to answer whenever there is more than one side to a debate.

Which is why it’s such a new thing in the Twin Cities.

NEW YORK (AP) — Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt say their four previous children are adjusting just fine to the arrival of a twin brother and sister last month, with cupcakes and “Dora the Explorer” to help ease the transition.

Jolie and Pitt speak about their growing family, their charity work and their work-life balance in a question-and-answer in a special edition of People magazine that hit the newsstands Monday. A 19-page, $14 million-photo spread anchors the piece and gives a first look at the new babies interacting with the whole family.

The photos show Jolie and Pitt — each cradling a twin — sitting on a white bed with Zahara, 3, between them; Pax, 4, by Jolie’s side; and Shiloh, 2, lying on top of 7-year-old Maddox, who is plopped down by Pitt. There are close-ups of the twins, Knox and Vivienne, with their eyes closed, and photos of the older siblings gently holding the babies.

“It is chaos, but we are managing it and having a wonderful time,” Jolie, 33, says in the interview, though Pitt jumps in: “(It’s) still a cuckoo’s nest.”

(I thought this time I would I would hijack a post before anyone else did)

Might I suggest: How To Start Your Very Own Blog In Fifty-One Easy Steps!

(As Mitch says) That is all.

Since time immemorial, I’ve set this blog to display the most recent 20 posts.  When it was just me doing the writing, that was usually enough to keep 4-5 days’ work on the front page.

Now, with two fairly prolific guys working on the blog, it means that stuff I published Friday is already falling off the bottom of the blog.  After a weekend, mind you – when I rarely post, and Roosh usually slows down.

So for the first time ever, I’m going to crank up the number of posts on the front page.

Newspapers: Shrinking.

Shot In The Dark:  Growing.

Invest accordingly.

Sgt. Tom, Flash’s son, is in Iraq. 

I remember Tom when he was still in junior high; my stepson, Will, used to babysit him and his younger brothers, way back when not all that long ago.

Best wishes.

I’ve read MNPublius for years.  I’ve given the principals, Zack and Matt and Sean, a bit of crap over the years (my “giggly fratboys” references), partly as a tongue-in-cheek riff on their ages (they were all in middle school high school college three years ago), partly because they did some frat-boy-y things (squatting on Kennedy Vs. The Machine’s old Blogspot domain when it opened – to which they at least, to their credit, copped).  But despite their occasional propensity to be breathless fanboys of any DFLer anywhere (hey, it’s their right), they are one of the regions more credible leftyblogs.

They could have just scuppered all that:

Starting right now, anyone has the ability to launch an online conversation about anything!  We, of course, won’t allow spam or lies, but liberal, conservative, mundane, or surreal, it may find a home on MNpublius Diaries.  Just as we’ve refused to censor comments, we will not censor content on the basis of our own opinions, but instead embrace a truly open forum for a discussion of Minnesota politics.  Now, we also may promote some especially intelligent diaries to the frontpage, but that will be a thoroughly subjective decision (hey, we’re opening up the diary page, but we still reign on the frontpage!).

Er…best of luck, guys!

From the “look who pooed on my floor” department:

I’m not interested in blog-gazing “across the isle” by finding the most ridiculous post from the most ridiculous local righty blogger and taking pot-shots at it (for old time’s sake, this is Mitch Berg in case you are wondering

Still the best, baby!

You hear that, Ed Morrissey? You feelin’ it, Hinderaker? Brodkorb? Kersten?

Cuckly the Stoo says I am the most ridiculous!

I’m the shee-izzy-neeyot! At least, according to…um, an anonymous crankblogger who “won” the “City Pages” last “Best Leftyblogger” award…

(Note to new conservative bloggers: when they call you “ridiculous”, “thin-skinned” or worse better, it’s because they’ve bounced all their intellectual checks, and are digging for rhetorical change under bus seats).

The mission is proceeding according to plan.

(That should get ’em talking…)

Doug Grow – long known as the DFL’s number two shill in the mainstream media (second only to Lori Sturdevant) – is trying to blow some wind into the sails of the Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg campaign.

E-Tink is trying to unseat Michele Bachmann in the Sixth Congressional District. He’s most “famous” in Minnesota for having been Jesse Ventura’s do-nothing Tranportation Commissioner. He should be even more famous for his ghoulish performance after the collapse of the I35W bridge, almost a year ago. As the fires still blazed and before the last girders had fallen into the water, Tinklenberg joined State Rep. Alice “The Phantom” Hausman on TV and radio coverage of the tragedy, claiming – before the National Transportation Safety Board investigators had shut off their pagers summoning them to Minneapolis – that the collapse was the result of Tim Pawlenty’s refusal to raise the gas tax. The performance was a ghoulish embarassment that would have ended the career of a politician…

…that was not a DFLer in a city where having paid lefty PR flaks like the MNPost and the Minnesoros “Independent” are almost redundant.

Anyway – Doug Grow writes in re the race:

A month ago, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann said she’s on board with a campaign plan to get gasoline prices back to $2 a gallon…Do people in the 6th Congressional District buy this sort of campaign talk?

Well, if “they” don’t understand the laws of supply and demand, they can certainly get jobs as economics reporters for the Minnesoros “Indepdendent” perhaps they deserve to be getting their news from Doug Grow we can trade them all to Massachussetts?

I digress. Grow is doing what he’s done his whole career; spin, whilst carrying water for the DFL:

At this point, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has NOT put the 6th District in its “red to blue” category. Instead, it calls the district an “emerging” race for Democrats. The difference in categories is substantial: Democrats in “red to blue” districts receive financial and other resource help. Those in “emerging” districts receive pats on the back and encouraging words from the DCCC: “Go get ’em, buddy!”

But even if the DCCC isn’t convinced that Bachmann can be defeated after one term in Washington, Tinklenberg says he’s optimistic.

I’d actually pay money to hear some DFLer say “Oh, I’m going to get my donkey kicked. It’s hopeless. Smoke ’em if you got ’em”.

Of course, being a DFLer in Minnesota means never needing to come up with your own facile explanations:

Recall, Bachmann defeated Patty Wetterling by 8 percentage points, 50 to 42. BUT there was a third candidate in the race, John Binkowski, of the Independence Party, who picked up 7.8 percent of the vote. This time around, the IPs endorsed Tinklenberg.

When you add Wetterling’s 127,144 votes and Binkowski’s 23,557 votes, Bachmann won the district by just 548 votes.

Fascinating.

Except that Bachmann and Wetterling were running for an open seat – which is always much more up in the air.

And the national Democrat establishment did a lot more than pat Patty on the back; they poured truckloads of money into the race. The media, even more in the bag than usual for the DFLer, called in all its markers, assisted by a large, sometimes deranged pack of alternative media adjuncts. And for all that, Bachmann still not only won, but won by the biggest margin of victory of any Republican in the state, in a year where Republicans got trounced nationwide, with the most conservative message of any Republican in Minnesota.

This time around? She’s the incumbent. That’s worth a few points all by itself. The media has moved on to other races, doing its damnedest to get Al Franken elected. The DCCC knows a dead horse when it sees one. Her alt-media stalkers – having provided her (I am convinced) with at least one point of her margin of victory – have marginalized themselves into near-irrelevance; even some of the media figures that used to regard them with breathless credulity have gotten the message.

E-Tink; Dead Bid Walking.

Proof that G-d not only exists, but cares for us deeply:

“We are sad to announce the engagement of Salma Hayek and Francois-Henri Pinault has been canceled,” publicist Cari Ross said in a statement. “There will be no further comment.”

If you. Catch. My.  Drift. 

Game, set, match.

To:  Paul Schmelzer, Minnesoros “Independent”

From: Mitch Berg, schmuck blogger

Re:  Interview

Paul,

While I think the Mindy has become a pretty risible exercise, you are without a doubt a writer that could make it at a real publication.

Now, since you do write for a lefty propaganda shill site, I know that one of the ground rules is that you have to titter and chuckle at any traditional representation of religion (with exceptions made for lesbians declaring themselves ordained priests, Jewish supporters of Hamas and that sort of thing).

But reading this bit here, I gotta say:  interviewing PZ “Meyers” Myers about religion (with breathless, Tiger-beat-style credulity, no less; “The incident with college student Webster Cook comes as religious passions everywhere are incredibly inflamed –- Shiites and Sunnis, Evangelicals and atheists, etc. Does this say anything about the state of religion?”) is a little like interview Andy Dick about the state of method acting.

That is all.

UPDATE:  And no, Paul and PZ – the incident says nothing about the “state of religion”.  It says something about the state of atheism/agnosticism.  They’re reduced to playing “monkey in the middle” with the artifacts of ceremony. 

Pathetic.

Yesterday, I reported that JRoosh of RooshFive was hanging up his pajamas. Family obligations and a busy schedule made his customary blogging schedule – a very me-like four-or-more posts per day – untenable.

The good news? Roosh will be joining the staff here at Shot In The Dark.

OK. Roosh will be the staff here at Shot In The Dark. In 6.5 years, it’s the first time I’ve had a co-blogger.
At any rate, Roosh will be bringing his blend of fiscal conservatism, family, and hot cars to this blog…well, pretty much whenever he wants to. Might be weekly, might be annually, but he’s here.

Everyone say hi!

One of my favorite relatively-new blogs in the Twin Cities center-right is now one of my most lamented ex-blogs.  Roosh is hanging up the jammies:

A rough sketch of my “Vertical Alignment” can be found in the subtitle to my Blog. Save God, it’s all there, and pretty much in order.

…but something has to go. And for some time now, I’ve had a pretty good idea what.

Blogging is a lot more time consuming than it looks. And ask any blogger who is committed to regular writing, it is also quite addicting. As much as I have enjoyed the creative process, the comments and debate, I have a finite amount of time and focus and I have decided to allocate both elsewhere for the foreseeable future.

He’s right – it does take a lot of time.  And any adult has to prioritize – as Roosh notes in the lead-up to his piece.  For my part, I’ve had to keep my blogging to a fairly tightly-constrained period between 5:30 and 7AM, most days (summers aren’t quite so bad, but on the other hand summers are the time I’m least interested in writing).

So sorry the cookie’s crumbled this way, Roosh.  Hope to see you around.

I’ve been wanting to write about the absurdity of Obama’s “withdrawal” plan – aka “Dunkirk On The Euphrates” – but Jeff Kouba already did it:

Well, I guess it wouldn’t be precipitous if you don’t define precipitous as leaving all your equipment behind.

The Dems are channeling split personalities when it comes to Iraq. On the one hand, Iraq’s early security woes were because we didn’t have enough troops to prevent looting and whatnot, and on the other, Fightin’ Obama can reduce our presence in Iraq to a skeleton crew and still perform the tasks we’re doing now.

So, go ahead America. Roll the dice. Those crazy Islamists really don’t mean what they say, do they?

The Dems’ entire approach to terrorism seems to be “it’s all adolescent posturing; ignore/negotate with them and it’ll go away”.

Two things did not happen at the MDE/MNPublius Happy Hour at Billy’s on Grand last night:

1. Nobody started singing Kumbaya. In the presence of each other’s “operatives”, nobody apparently converted to their respective dark sides. Left stayed left, right stayed right, and though the twain met, it did not turn into an Ophrah episode.
2. Nobody started throwing punches. Everyone got along just fine in the presence of a roomful of the other side’s “operatives”. The lion didn’t lie down with the lamb, but they did share nachos and buffalo wings with each other.

Who did I meet? It was such a blur; I met Mary Lahammer from Channel 2, and found we shared some time in the North Dakota broadcasts wars. I met the MNPublius guys – Matt and Sean, whom I call the “giggly fratboys”, but all in good fun (Michael Corleone: “It’s not personal. It’s business), along with (naturally) the co-host of the party, my NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb. Gavin Sullivan was there, along with Jeff Rosenberg from MN Campaign Report, Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci from KAR, one of the fellas from “Liberal in the Land of Conservative” (nice guy, albeit a poor judge of “smack“), Sara Janecek and her colleagues from Politics in Minnesota, Dane Smith, Shadow from the “Urban Renaissance Coalition“, Brian McClung from Governor Pawlenty’s office, Anne Mason from the Erik Paulsen campaign, “Two Putt Tommy” (who’s graduating from being a comment section gadfly to writing for “MNBlue”; honestly, he could do better). I’m told even Charlie Quimby braved the flood of “anti-progressive operatives” and showed up, although he disappeared before I could work my way over to that corner of the bar.

And of course, I saw Brian Lambert, now with Minneapolis Saint Paul Magazine…

…at whom I’ve taken my fair share of shots over the years.

And at whom I’ll no doubt take many more.

But – here’s the fun part – I had a blast meeting him. He’s sort of like a political photonegative (a polinegative?) of Bob Davis; quick, glib but articulate, just erudite enough. We haven’t actually met face-to-face since he sat in for Geoff Charles one day at KSTP in 1985 – and I have to say that I had a great time talking with the guy.

I know. Stifle the “Kumbaya” stuff, dagnabbit; I’m gonna keep dinging on all of their politics! I mean, let’s be clear – nothing about the event was, as Charlie Quimby put it, “a symbolic show of bipartisanship — which is people who’d like to stab each other in the back pretending they won’t”. There was nothing “bi”-partisan about the evening; we all knew what sides everyone was on, when we were talking politics at all. It was multipartisan and nonpartisan (and let’s be perfectly clear; I only stab people in the face).

But as I noted earlier this week – one of the great joys of events like these is that you start to see people with whom you spar (constantly!) as people, rather than as collections of cliches and stereotypes. Which makes arguments, debates and discussions more difficult and, ultimately, much more rewarding.  And which some, unfortunately, find threatening.

Kudos to Matt, Sean and Michael. We gotta do it again sometime.

Hmmm…

Tonight’s the MDE/MNPublius bipartisan happy hour at Billy’s on Grand:

Hope to see you there.

———-

Speaking of graphics, I saw this in a post on Charlie Quimby’s blog the other day:

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Yesterday, I noted that among my favorite interviews on the NARN have been my discussions with Eric Black, Dane Smith and Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak. I genuinely enjoy talking, and occasionally sparring, across the aisle. Two things can happen; either your beliefs get stronger from being tested in the exchange, or their weaknesses are exposed, perhaps leading to their changing. This happened to me twenty-five years ago; determined assault from conservative classmates showed me that my big-L Liberal beliefs were untenable. So I changed.

And this ties into what I wrote Monday – about how seeing those across the aisle from you as human makes for better, more satisfying argument. In a larger, more important sense, it’s also kinda important for running a country.

Of course, the flip side is also true; if you can keep your enemies firmly, securely dehumanized – from calling your opponents “wingnuts” or “commies”, up to presuming that the government you didn’t elect is depraved and evil enough to, say, spread AIDS in prisons or blow up the World Trade Center – it makes for an easy, more facile argument.

———-

It’s generally accepted as conventional wisdom that political discourse in this country has never been more foulmouthed, polarized and angry that it is today. That’s a bunch of liberal crap…

…er, wait. Heh heh. Dunno where that came from. Anyway – let me start over.

It’s ahistorical, to say the least. The 1828 campaign, which saw Andrew Jackson topple John Quincy Adams, was marred by violence, and represented a clash of social poles that spat venom across and unbridgeable gap; it was the original “blue vs. red” election; indeed, some of the media parallels between then and today are just too tempting.

Of course, at various times in the 1890’s and 1930’s, people were genuinely, and rightly, worried about the “discourse” adjourning to bayonet-point – which, in fact, it did in 1861.

That was an ugly, polarized debate.

Today? All we have is people taking broad, often factually-vacant shots at those with whom they disagree. Many of these shots are made possible by that sense of dehumanization we talked about on Monday. The “debate” – which, on blogs, is entirely one-sided, even if there’s a “comment section” involved – is fueled by the very real human pathologies that regard…

1. …”our side” as being where all the righteousness is, while “their side” is vacuous on a good day, evil on a bad one.
2. “Their” side being vacuous-to-evil, of course, anyone to practices it must by extension be vapid-to-rotten as well.
3. As long as you can keep your “enemy” nice and abstract and inhuman, there’s no real human consequence to ascribing his beliefs to base, loathsome motives.
4. This is reinforced by the tendency on blogs (especially, in the Twin Cities, among bloggers on the left, although it’s not exclusive) to write pseudonymously – so that not only are their targets too abstract to treat like humans, but they themselves are too abstract to be vulnerable to the very treatment they dish out.
5. Finally, resistance to the very notion that one should try to get past the abstract, dehumanizing influences of the medium.

At the bottom of it, of course, is this; it’s comfortable sitting in your echo chamber, smug ‘n happy with your preconceptions and your prejudices, bristling at the idea of approaching it any differently, because it’s just so much fun hanging out with your friends and bashing on the conveniently-abstract, abstractly-evil “enemy” among us.

It’s always been fun getting beyond that – for example, at the MOB parties I wrote about on Monday, or at Flash’s “Drinking Moderately” soirees.

Of course, liberals react oddly to the notion of going to a MOB party. And conservatives stopped getting invited to Flash’s gatherings about a year or so ago; rumor (not from Flash, by the way) had it the lefties didn’t like being seen with the enemy.

———-

Which brings us back to Charlie Quimby’s question: “Is it OK to meet unconditionally with anti-progressive GOP operatives?”

So many questions:

1. “Is it OK” according to what standard? Who set that standard? Why?
2. What are the consequences of meeting with the “operatives” if it’s not OK?
3. If it’s not “OK” to “meet with” Michael Brodkorb (over happy hour – the most innocuous and levelling institution Western Civilization has developed since the Polar Bear Run), what “conditions” would make it OK? Handcuffing all Republicans? What? Help me out here.
4. So if it is objectively proven that “progressivism” is actually intensively regressive, would that change the ground rules for this “Meeting?” (Trick question; it has been proven, albeit subjectively).
5. GOP Operative? So friggin’ what? A guy’s gotta have a job. And Michael does it well – indeed, he eats your party’s lunch so regularly that he’s become, if anything, a bigger source of derangement than Michele Bachmann and Katherine Kersten – two other conservatives that beat the local left like bongo drums, and have earned boundless hatred for it. And while I scratch my head at some of Brodkorb’s more gossipy revelations, after a while you have to look at his record – exposing Franken’s tax problems, which are on a whole ‘nother level than a squib Playboy interview – and realize the guy’s on the ball. Criminy, the way to learn to do things better is to have contact with those who do it better than you – and Brodkorb does it better than most of you. Grow up and cut the drama.
6. OK, let’s back out of the ideological swamp; if it’s not “OK” to “meet” (i.e. have a beer) with a “GOP operative” (and a room full of his friends, and yours as well), where do you stop? Should we not work together, too? (It’s not an academic question – the left actively purges “anti-progressive” thought in industries they control, like academia, education, unions, etc). Not worship together? Yep, you’re working on that. Not live in the same neighborhoods? At what point does contact – “meeting”, drinking, working, worshipping, studying, living – with those with whom you disagree, make you…unclean? Subject to dire consequences of “non-OK”-ness? Whatever you’re worried about?
7. Indeed – what in the hell are you worried about?

I’d expect that question from a lot of people before I’d expect it from Quimby. Yesterday, by way of pleading the sincerity with which he looks for conversation across the aisle, he elaborated:

Real community and real civility — civitas — come about when antagonists find something important they truly want in common. Something they cannot have without respecting the other’s perspective, values and rights.

Does anyone see the leaps series of hopscotch-like hops here?

Put aside your (plural) Brodkorb derangement for a moment here; does anyone seriously think that any of us on the right don’t seek a better country and society?

And before you answer “but conservative polices won’t lead to a better country and society”, just stop. In many ways, they do, and have – which is why all of us conservatives subscribe to it.

To ascribe it to other motives – that we’re idiots, that we’re tools of powerful interests that control our feeble little wingnut minds – is to buy into the “Dehumanizing” we talked about on Monday..

And liberalism has had its place (he says, clenching his teeth as he types) as well, and done the odd bit of good, by some definitions. Whew. That was tough.

More importantly – assuming there’s nothing worth talking about with liberals is just as dumb.

Quimby also asks:

Why would I or any progressive attend a branded event that seems calculated to create a veneer of bipartisanship for perhaps the most partisan attack blog in the state?

Dunno, Charlie. Why don’t you ask the MNPublius guys, among the few most respected “progressive” bloggers in the state.

If they can tough it out…

———-

For my part? Of course it’s “OK” to “meet” with “anti-liberty” “pro-speech-rationing, anti-growth, anti-market, pro-racist-gun-control” “operatives” over a couple of beers. For those with the intellectual horsepower to pull it off, it can be a fun challenge. For those who can take themselves and their beliefs a little less teeth-clenchingly seriously than normal, it can be fun to get out and mix it up with, or even just meet, other people. And as someone who not only “meets” with “operatives” across the aisle pretty regularly (and used to be one of them, for that matter), I’ll tell you something if you promise to keep it very quiet.

Ready?

(There are no consequences. It’s OK. It’s just casual contact with your fellow US citizen and, by the way, human. Nobody’s going to think the worse of you – assuming the left really doesn’t have some kind of purity police that show up at these things and takes names. They don’t exist – right?)

(And by the way, Michael Brodkorb doesn’t eat babies (just Democrats’ lunch) – he is, indeed, one of the nicer guys you’ll meet. Your face won’t peel off in divine retribution if you’re seen in the same room as him. Again, barring some kind of DFL purity police. We can bar that, can’t we?)

Shhhhhhh. Mum’s the word.

So I’ll hope to see you at Billy’s tonight. Hopefully the “consequences” are manageable.

The MDE/MNPublius bipartisan happy hour is coming up tomorrow at Billy’s:

Hope to see you there.

———-

Yesterday, I wrote about a party that an email discussion forum threw, which had some interesting results.

Once or twice a year for the past four years, we at the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers throw a party (stay tuned).

Now, the MOB tends to be center-right bloggers. It’s not entirely true – there are bloggers from around the spectrum, and some totally non-political bloggers as well on the MOBRoll. But for whatever reason, while the group has eschewed politics (indeed, tends to avoid politics at our parties completely), the membership is mostly center-right.

It’s not for lack of trying. Pinky swear.

Every time we throw a party I send more email invites to liberals than to conservatives, and I have the “sent” file to prove it. I send dozens of invites to local leftybloggers, media personalities, politicians of both parties.

Most don’t respond at all.

Some send “I gotta wash my hair”-caliber responses. I’m looking at you, Paul Demko.

A few, strangely, reacted with anger, writing bulgy-veined, teeth-clenched, splittle-o-licious rants about how conservatives were no fun. We’ll come back to them tomorrow.

And a few – Robin and Scott Steven Marty, Chuck Olson and (his girlfriend, whose name eludes me at the moment), Bob Collins (not a liberal pol, per se, but if you lay down with Keillor you’ll get up with snooty elitist fleas) and a few others actually bit the bullet and showed up. And we had a decent time. And – just like at the E-Democracy party I wrote about yesterday – it became just a tad harder to rip on them. Oh, their politics and policies and, eventually, employers were still a parade of material. But they weren’t just a bunch of facile labels anymore. There was a human behind the labels.

My neighbor Flash, who writes Centrisity, did something similar. For a couple of summers, he graciously hosted “Drinking Moderately” – a play on “Drinking Liberally” (which is a national chain of events where liberals gather where they’re told to drink and talk politics) – where he’d invite conservative, liberal, and who-gives-a-crap bloggers to his garage and his always-open kegerator to talk…

…whatever.

And, just like the MOB parties, it was a good time. Largely because there was free beer (thanks, Flash!)…

…but also because I got to meet the likes of Chris Dykstra and the MNPublius guys and – are we detecting a pattern here? – see that they were actual people, as opposed to labels. And, I’d like to think, vice versa.

Oh, it didn’t always work. There were a few attendees who remained bloated, irascible jagoffs and/or mirthless, spiteful harpies, and it showed. But as a rule, the experiment was a pretty cool one. Retroactive kudos to Flash.

———-

I’ve taken to enjoying this sort of exchange – when it works, anway. It can be interesting, talking with “the enemy” and, once in a while, listening to see what you can learn.

I actively seek this sort of engagement – partly because I’m a curious guy, partly because I love a good debate. A few months back, I sent a bunch of invites to appear on the NARN to a bunch of local DFL politicians. Of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that I knew most of them wouldn’t respond – more on that tomorrow. And the prime motivator, naturally, was to highlight Andy Birkey’s ridiculous double standard, calling out Michele Bachmann for avoiding liberal media so many area liberal pols are utter cowards at facing polite but probing dissent.

Still, it’s a fact – our interviews with Eric Black, Dane Smith and RT Rybak are among my favorite episodes of the NARN show. Not that anyone convinced anyone, but have some discord in one another’s echo chambers can be good for the brain, once in a while.

On occasion, I also like appearing on Radio Free Nation, a BlogTalkRadio show hosted by Saint Paul’s Marty Owings. I’m the token conservative, normally, going at it with a couple of liberals, black activists, a couple of Ronulans, and the odd “anarchist”. And I learn things.

Of course, some of those “things” are “people are weird”, but in fact it can be interesting, getting outside ones own political safe zone, if only because the stretching and pulling makes your own beliefs stronger (or, alternately, changes them. Which is how I became a conservative in the first place).

But not everyone sees it that way. To some, that idea is a threat.

More on that tomorrow.

First, the plug:

It’s the first Minnesota Democrats Exposed/MNPublius Happy Hour, at Billy’s on Grand. Hope to see you there.

———-

Of course, it’s not all beer and pretzels.

A very smart man – a teacher of mine who’d served in Vietnam – explained the “why” of basic training.  “The goal” he said “is to teach you to dehumanize your enemy”; to see the enemy not as a human being, but as a “Jap” or a “Kraut” or a “Gook” or whomever the enemy of the day is, a not-quite-human thing who doesn’t rate the consideration a human does.  Someone you can kill not only with impunity, but with your country’s approval.

In Citizen Soldiers, Steven Ambrose described the moments when GIs in World War II started seeing the enemy as human – as people who really weren’t all that different from them (notwithstanding the whole “supported a regime that started a war that brought them to Europe” bit).

It was a huge moment for everyone involved.

———-

Years and years ago – when I first got a computer, actually, back before “the web” was the common synonym for the Internet – I got involved in an “E-Democracy” email discussion group on Minnesota Politics.

Traditionally, online discussion groups tend to fall into one of two categories, each with its own set of pathologies:

1. Unmoderated Free For Alls: These tended to start with a bang, and rapidly descend into anarchy. “Inhibition” is one of the first casualties of online communication, and for some people that reads “license to act like you’d never act in person”. These people are drawn to unmoderated free for alls as a place to vent…whatever – anger, ire or immature, juvenile urge to call people names. The signal to noise ratio on these sorts of forums usually drops to 0 quickly, as the people who were interested in the actual subject at hand wandered away to more interesting pastures.
2. Overmoderated Gulags: These forums kill the discussion to protect it; moderators enforce rules at some level or another. These rules can be elaborate and legalistic (some forums have posted rules, human moderators and formal, pseudolegal appeals processes) or arbitrary and capricious (the forum’s “owner” bans anyone who displeases him/her).

In the early days, the E-Democracy forums trended toward “1”, above. And it was fairly predictable stuff. They were (then as today) dominated by DFLers and Greens. I was, in fact, invited to join the forum by the chairman of the state Libertarian party (to which I then belonged) to help even things up a little bit; at the time, there were maybe two Republicans, two Libertarians, and dozens and dozens of DFL/Green/”Reform”-future IndyVentura party members (and a couple of typically-irritating Young Socialists).

And it was wild and wooly. Both sides All three or four or five sides tore into each other like hungry sharks.  I ripped into “liberals” with gleeful abandon, and they ripped back.  Because there’s nothing in Minnesota Politics that we detested more than each other.

And then the forum’s management threw a party.

We met at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis.  We brought brats and beer (and tofu, natch) and chips, and sat down at picnic tables…

…and talked baseball and street cleaning and movies and just a tiny little dab of politics.

I wrote in my wrapup on the forum the next day that it was just a tiny bit harder to flame on people that I’d met in person.  That I’d actually met as humans, rather than as mere brain-damaged big-government-coddling tax-and-spend liberal drones.  And a few of them wrote as well, saying they could maybe be a little more tolerant of uncaring, selfish conservatives now that they’d actually met some of us – something they didn’t do much of in real life.

It made an impression.

Oh, it only lasted so long, of course.  Soon a few of us (myself, you’ll be shocked to know, included) indulged in a few petty flames for old time’s sake.   Other just never “got” the whole “the other guy is human too” bit.  But things got, and stayed, just a tad more civil, because people got to see each other as just a tad less a collection of labels and more as people who believed what they did for their own reasons, but didn’t exist in vacuums.

Today, the email discussion group is pretty much an anachronism (and “E-Democracy” has decayed into a sad joke); blogs pretty much gutted their reason for existence.  Everyone can write anything they want; blogs that are nothing but mindless flames tend to get ignored over time (or turn into Democratic Underground).

But the same pattern holds just as true; people see those across the aisles as labels to attack, pathologies to identify, threats to be counterattacked.

And just like E-Democracy 13 years ago, some of us thought – “Maybe the answer is a party”.

More tomorrow.

Michael Brodkorb: “Joe Bodell lied about his identity to smear me on Wikipedia”.

Joe Bodell: “I know you are but what am I?”

No word yet on whether Bodell has turned his crack investigative skills on Brodkorb.

This morning I was talking with Leaky, my pet beagle.

“Nothing like a nice cup of joe in the morning”, I said as we walked back from the coffee shop.

“Yeah.  But I saw cockroaches in the kitchen”.

“Huh?  What are you talking about?  You never even went near the kitchen…hell, the place doesn’t even have a kitchen”.

“So?”

“Well, did you or did you not see cockroaches?”

“Yes”

“In the coffee shop?”

“Well, in a coffee shop.  In Guadalajara.  Eight years ago.  But nobody has to know that”.

“So in other words, Leaky, you want to talk crap about the coffee shop and its owner because…”

“Well, because I can”, Leaky responded.

“What do you mean?” I replied, somewhat dumbfounded.

“Well, I’m just a dog writing under a pseudonym.  Nobody has the faintest idea who I am.  I can say anything I want!  I can say that Mark Gisleson is a closet Republican!  I can say that PZ Meiers is a secret priest…”

“But none of that is true”.

“So?”  Leaky added, a wry grin crossing his face.  “I can say that Eva Young has posters of Michele Bachmann and that Swiftee has posters of Eva Young…”

“Oh, good Lord, Leaky…” \

“…and nobody can say or do a thing about it, because I’m anonymous – or, to be correct, pseudonymous”.

I walked, sipping my coffee.  “But then if they found out your real name, and people could start digging into your past…”

“NO!”, Leaky yelled, stopping cold in his tracks.  “DON’T EVEN JOKE ABOUT THAT!”  A glint of panic welled through his eyes.  “THERE ARE SOME CRAZY PEOPLE OUT THERE”.

“Right, Leaky.  And you…”  I started, and let it go.  “So in other words, you want to be able to write any crap you want without consequences, but you want to be insulated from the same thing yourself”.

“Yep”, Leaky said, panic having subsided, taking a sip from his mochaccino.  “That’s pretty much it”.

“Oh.  So…” I pondered, “if people were to know that your real name is…”

“NO!  DON”T!  I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”, he bellowed. sticking his paws in his ears.  “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!  NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA”

“Well, I mean, it’d only be…”

“NYA NYA NYA”.

“Oh, OK.  Relax.  Mums’ the word.”

“Cool”, he said, taking another slug.

“And the fact that you work at a prominent local…”

“NO!  NO!  NO!  NYA NYA NYA!  NYAH!”

I shook my head.  “You are one strange dog”.

“Yep”, he said, calm as suddenly as he’d gotten exercised.

Demko at the Minnesoros “Independent” brings the allegations (from an organization that shares funders with the “Independent”):

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a complaint with the Senate’s ethics committee calling for an investigation into whether Sen.Norm Coleman’s Washington living arrangements violate the legislative body’s gift rules. The questions stem from recent revelations that Coleman rents a $600-per-month basement apartment on Capitol Hill from Republican operative Jeff Larson.

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci responds:

And the story here is what, exactly? If the landlord was trying to payoff the Senator or give him a side-door gift, what about the other 8 months (2007: July August September October & December; 2008: February, April, May and possibly June) when the rent was paid on time and the checks were cashed. Why November and January? Why hold just the March check? Certainly there can be no other explanation for the 3 relevant months in this casual business relationship?

Not if your a Soros funded hatchet jobber trying to get moonbat liberals elected without having to actually defend your stupid stances on taxation, energy policy and national defense.

Sometimes it seems like the local leftyblogosphere is paralyzed by MDE Envy:

Finally, for those barking seal MDE wannabe lefty douchebloggers wondering why the MNGOP is just attacking CREW and not addressing the substance of the charges, it’s really very simple.

It’s because there is no substance to address.

People ask me why I keep dinging on the “Independent”, when it is by any objective measure a complete failure; they have a higher payroll than some radio stations I’ve worked at, but about the same circulation as Shot In The Dark.

It’s simple. As Foot showed us last week, these organizations – “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics Among Republicans In Washington”, Media Matters, the Center for “Independent Media” and all of its subordinate affiliated blogs – all get their money from the same little circle of deep-pocketed lefty activists.

And that’s their right. But on the chance that there’s a news consumer out there who doesn’t know exactly what they’re getting – not just from the “Independent”, but from the rest of this chain of financial cause and effect – then I’m gonna try to fix that.

It is their right. And I’ll defend it (although it’s interesting to notice how many of the “Indy’s” staff were at the “Media Reform Conference” in Minneapolis last week, cheerleading on cue for the notion of reimposing the “Fairness” Doctrine, which is a direct attack on conservatives’ freedom).

All that, and sometimes it’s just fun beating on the hapless.

UPDATE:  Of course I’m too charitable. Brodkorb has, to quote Paul Harvey, the rest of the story.

Which brings up a question:  while it’s possible that most of the media that are breathlessly reporting on Coleman’s apartment are unaware of…:

• …the links between the CREW and Franken’s campaign, and…
• …the financial ties linking the Center for “Independent” Media and CREW…

…it’d be an insult to Steve Perry and Paul Demko’s unquestioned intelligence to assume they don’t.