Category: Big Alt-Media
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Stasis
Change is all around us. Some things – technology, reality TV, the Dow – change very quickly. Others – glaciers, the cityscape or landscape around you – change so slowly as to be imperceptible, until you look at a time lapse photograph or think back over 20 years in a place, and go “wow – that…
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Cue Captain Renault
The big news in the alt-media world in the Twin Cities last week was the MinnPost’s profile of Michael Brodkorb. Michael has been rhetorical catnip for both sides of the aisle for the past decade or so. When he was “Minnesota Democrats Exposed”, especially in his pseudonymous phase before 2006, he was the Minnesota left’s Public Enemy…
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Oops
Over the Easter Weekend/news hole, Rolling Stone magazine and their writer, Sabrina “Amoral Pig” Erdely, retracted their hatchet job University of Virginia rape story. I’ll add emphasis: On Sunday, Ms. Erdely, in her first extensive comments since the article was cast into doubt, apologized to Rolling Stone’s readers, her colleagues and “any victims of sexual assault who…
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They Bought Themselves An Internet
The FCC’s new internet rules cite a Soros-funded front group dozens and dozens of times: New internet regulations finally released by the Federal Communications Commission make 46 references to a group funded by billionaire George Soros and co-founded by a neo-Marxist…The term “Free Press” is mentioned 62 times in the regulations. Some are redundant mentions…
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Despicable Steve
It hasn’t been a good campaign for DFL Secretary of State candidate Steve Simon. For starters, he barely got over 40% in the primary – against a perennial candidate and a nobody. Which might not have been a showstopper for the DFL machine to overcome, except that they were up against Dan Severson, who has…
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Doug Grow, Narrative Policeman
Surgeons do surgery. Baseball players? They play baseball. And Doug Grow? For four decades and change, generations of Minnesota voters know that Doug Grow is synonymous for flogging and fluffing the DFL narrative. Yesterday’s MinnPost piece on the Severson press conference (which I wrote about yesterday) is one for the record books. The DFL and media…
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In Memory…
…of Cindy Yuille and Steven Forsythe, who were murdered a year ago at this minute (3:25PM Pacific Time) in the Clackamas Town Center Mall in Portland, Oregon by Jacob Tyler Roberts, an insane, delusional narcissist… …and the many, perhaps dozens, of people whom Roberts couldn’t murder in the ensuing minutes and hours, because Nick Meli…
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Carpetbaggers: Of Moo And Cow
Last week, we looked at a troika of “gun rights” groups and their singular and plural records. Last Tuesday, we showed you a fundraising letter for a group called Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) that Minnesota Second Amendment activists have been getting. In the letter – from “Minnesota Gun Rights” executive director Chris Dorr – the sky will fall if the…
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“Moms Want Action”: The Assault Spam Generator!
We’ve written before about “Moms Demand Action”, the gun-grabber astroturf group financed entirely by liberals with deep pockets, and “run” (and, I suspect, almost solely inhabited) by Jane Kay, a woman whose hatred of the law-abiding firearms owner is so toxic as to frankly make me worry about her well-being. Mama Jane has a website,…
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The House Isn’t Burning; The Residents Are
Jonah Goldberg at NRO writes about a recent Roger Simon jape at conservative legislators – by way of addressing a much larger question; why aren’t the media offended by the left’s assumption that they’re biased? Simon’s column reminds me of a point I’ve been making for years. Most mainstream journalists roll their eyes at the…
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Open Letter To The MinnPost Editorial Team
To: Joel Kramer (CEO/Editor), Roger Buoen and Susan Albright (Co-Managing Editors) Don Effenberger (News Editor) From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant Re: They Get What They Pay For Esteemed Editors: I was never much of a reporter. I could always do the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of a story just fine, and earned a living…
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Junk Science, Junk Journalism, Platinum Funding
The MinnPost – a non-profit-run institutional blog established the the intention to get a jump on the next wave of institutional journalism – gets a whole bunch of money from the Joyce Foundation. Joyce also bankrolls Minnesota’s “largest” gun grabber group, “Protect Minnesota”, and Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”, as well as paying academics…
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Our Idiot “Republican” Overlords
OK, I’m being hyperbolic. David Frum is not an idiot. But he is no more accurate than any other liberal on Second Amendment issues – as we see in his Daily Beast insta-opinion on the Navy Yard shooting, which is chock-full of enough ripe inaccuracy to be a Heather Martens piece. He tries to diagnose…
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Rise Up, Peasants, And Defend The Plutocrats!
I got this letter from “Protect Minnesota” recently. “Protect Minnesota” was what Rep. Heather Martens (DFLiar – HD66A) had to rename “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota” when it turned out her constant lying had damaged whatever credibility the old brand had. For those who’ve missed earlier installments of my coverage of Ms. Martens, here’s…
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Suck It, Fascist Pig
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (Orc) is trying his best to try to stymie the inevitable – also the will of the people of Illinois – by dawdling over his veto of Illinois’ bipartisan carry permit bill. But the bill passed with greater than a 60% majority, and Quinn’s bitchy little veto is likely to get…
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Black And White And Green And More Black
Doug Grow – DFL stenographer and reporter for the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost – is convinced that the GOP is lying about the effects of the Warehouse Tax. Exhibit A? Grow writes about the Red Wing Shoes’ opting out of building a new distribution center in Red Wing; it’s something we wrote about here in SITD a few…
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Nick Coleman: Same As It Ever Was
Anyone remember this classic? So, how is it that nakedly partisan bloggers who make things up left and right are gaining street cred while the mainstream media, which spend a lot of time criticizing themselves, are under attack? Or this one? “Bloggers don’t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their…
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Two Minnesotas
As I’ve noted a few times in this space, the cultural left, regionally and nationally, is in a panic over the news that the libertarian-conservative Koch Brotehrs are pondering buying some newspapers, including the Tribune Group. Last week in the MinnPost – a web publication formed by a former Strib publisher which serves largely as…
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MinnPost: Heather Martens’ PR Firm
The MInnPost is an organization I’d very much like to respect. It includes a raft of people I’ve considered good reporters. But over the course of Minnesota’s gun debate over this past session – brought on by Minnesota DFL legislators launching a raft of authoritarian gun bills, including at least one that called for confiscation…
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Groundhog Year Part III: In Plain Sight
In Eric Black’s three part series about the Second Amendment a few weeks back (part 1, 2 and 3), Black – writing in the MInnPost, which operates in part through the generosity of a big grant from the anti-gun zealot Joyce Foundation – notes the not-exactly-earthshaking conclusion that the Second Amendment can confuse people. And…
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Groundhog Year, Part II: The History Of An Illusion
As I noted about a week back, being a Second Amendment activist for any length of time – I started in the late eighties – is a little like being Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day; every time the argument cycles, you wind up answering exactly the same questions. Over and over and over. Some of…
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Ten Years
It was ten years ago yesterday that the Minnesota State Senate passed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, making Minnesota a “Shall Issue” state. I was there, back during this blog’s infancy. I sat in the gallery in the Senate and watched as the Metro DFL did what they always do on Second Amendment issues; lie…
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Groundhog Year
When Second Amendment human rights activists saw the movie Groundhog Day, we had two reactions: How the hell was it that Andie McDowell was the big break-out actress from the movie Sex, Lies and Videotape, and Laura San Giacomo languished in obscurity on LIfetime movies and the series “Just Shoot Me”? [*] This isn’t a comedy. This is a…
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Dana Milbank’s Victorian Vapours
Dana Milbank reflects the exposed id of the spoiled, cossetted, inside-the-beltway journalist in exactly the same way as Nick Coleman, Doug Grow and Lori Sturdevant do for the self-absorbed, smug Twin Cities journalistic “elite”; all of them wrap a lot of high-minded-sounding wrapping around “being a hack for a party narrative” . But a hack is a…
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The DFL/Media/Anti-Gun Hot Tub Party
When you’re a conservative, distrust of the media – like most large institutions – is part and parcel of the job. You probably accept that, for whatever reason – from systemic bias to cultural confirmation bias to being paid off by George Soros – that the media has a comprehensive bias toward the left. And…