Shot in the Dark

Category: Big Alt-Media

  • 1280 When It’s Dark Outside

    Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty! I’ll be on from 1-3 today.  I’ll be talking about my trips to the Capitol this past week, Doug Grow’s really really dumb column, why Republicans should support…

  • Doug Grow, Narrative-Fluffer

    I was down at the State Capitol yesterday for a press conference, as Representative Deb Hilstrom (DFL Brooklyn Park) introduced the gun bill/s we talked about yesterday. The bills, as we noted yesterday, would exert the state to solve actual problems – close gaps in the background check system, add mandatory penalties for using guns…

  • I Wonder If Eric Black And Brian Lambert Know This?

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails to elaborate on the subject of this piece, assailing the MinnPost’s Eric Black’s participation in the resurrection of the long-forgotten “Second Amendment Was Written To Protect Slavery!” meme: I forgot about this when I wrote to debunk Carl Bogus’ law review article.  Bogus relies for some of his historical evidence…

  • It Passes For Critique

    Brian Lambert took umbrage to Joe Doakes’ and my dissection of Eric Black’s anti-gun piece last week in the MinnPost, which cited a justifiably obscure theory by Dr. Carl Bogus. And Lambert took after that dissection with the keen analytical mind and the rapier logic I’ve associated with Lambo for the 26 years I’ve known him: At…

  • Chanting Points Memo: Only The Master Gets To Write Gun Control Laws

    Over the years on this blog, I’ve made certain observations about human behavior as manifested through online media, like blogs and Twitter. I’ve captured and codifed some of these observations as “Berg’s Law“, a series of common observations that I’m pretty sure are universal. One of the most commonly-invoked Laws is “Berg’s Seventh Law”, which…

  • Chanting Points Memo: The History Of An Illusion

    To:  Eric Black, MinnPost From: Mitch Berg, Peasant Re:  The New JournoList? Mr. Black, You built your reputation as a reporter.  And for that, I give you all due respect. I was a reporter, too.  Not much of one; a couple of radio stations, some free-lance print work.  Nothing big, and certainly nothing to build a…

  • Eric Black, Flat Earther

    I hinted at this in the past few weeks; one of the hard parts about being a Second Amendment supporter is that it feels a lot like the movie Groundhog Day.  Every time the left goes through one of its spasms of gun-grabbing, they bring up the same, exact, precise points every single time.  There…

  • Because Ken Martin Says So, That’s Why

    When I saw that Eric Black – formerly of the Strib, now at the Minnpost – had written a piece entitled “Redistricting maps give DFL advantage in legislative races, but …”, I went “uh oh”. I mean, Eric Black is no leftyblogging bobblehead.  He’s one of the Deans Of Minnesota Political Journalism (although to be fair…

  • Not The Most Myopic Response I’ve Gotten, But It Is A Low Bar Indeed

    To: “Ed Brayton” of “Free Thought Blogs” From: Mitch Berg, “Right Wing Conspirator” Re: Your Response Has Made Me Slam My Face Into My Palms So Many Times My Forehead Is Getting A Callous. Ed, I noticed in my pingbacks that you responded to my obit of the Minnesota “Independent” / Minnesota Monitor Here’s the…

  • Digging Deep For Offense

    I’m told that CNBC’s Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money”, and I have a bit of a resemblance. So – if Thompson Building and Remodeling, who’ve been sponsoring the Northern Alliance for most of this past five or six years, hires me to endorse their services, even though I don’t make any “Cramer” references whatsoever…

  • He’s Baaaaaack

    The lefties were all atwitter yesterday over a poll in the MinnPost that purported to show that Minnesotans blame the Minnesota GOP for the shutdown: By a whopping 2-1 margin, Minnesotans blame the Republicans who control both houses of the Legislature for the recent government shutdown more than they blame Gov. Mark Dayton, according to…

  • “The Way We Used To Do Things In Minnesota”

    The Twin Cities media have largely been dutiful stenographers during the shutdown, carrying the DFL’s message pretty much verbatim while gundecking the GOP pretty consistently. Let’s let all that slide for the moment.  We’ll come back to it, naturally. But let’s talk for a moment about the “Old” Twin Cities media’s moldiest meme; that there…

  • The Quarterback At The 20 Year Reunion

    Any bets on what they’ll talk about at this one? Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson have called a news conference to discuss the state government’s shutdown. Mondale is a Democrat who represented Minnesota as a U.S. senator in the 1960s and `70s. Carlson is a Republican who served as governor…

  • Government By Non-Sequitur

    I’m not sure what bugs me more about this Doug Grow column; the fact that he deemed a bit of screeching DFL illogic newsworthy, or that he doesn’t seem to realize that it’s screechingly illogical at all. He’s writing about the MN Senate debate over a Human Services bill which would change the way the state…

  • Press Bias: Two Takes

    “The media isn’t really liberal”. I’ve read a couple of mildly interesting takes on that premise this past week.  Both are worth a look – partly on their merits, and partly as a measure of how much the media’s liberal bias itself serves as a sort of “instrumentation error” in any attempt to judge the…

  • Correlation Does Not Equal Much Of Anything

    As I noted a while ago, I have been tempted for quite some time to write a long, long series of posts trying to explain the basic logical fallacies to leftybloggers.  I do this – or would do it, if I ever get the project underway – to improve the quality of the alt-media debate…

  • Chanting Points Memo: Disintegration

    Remember last session’s’ spending debate? When the DFL – which had a crushing majority in the Minnesota State House, pushed through a massive $435 million dollar tax hike. They squeedged the increase through on a couple of very close votes; the final vote in the House was 71-63.  Bear in mind that the DFL controlled…

  • Off On The Right Foot

    I was briefly at the Capitol yesterday for the signing of the Medicaid payoff bill.  It was terribly crowded, and I could only get as far as the outer lobby; it was that crowded. Toward the end of the speeches, a baby started squalling. Doug Grow in the MinnPost takes up the narrative, noting that…

  • A Look Ahead To The 2011 Session

    January 3: Session kicks off.  Mark Dayton throws a “blue jeans” inaugural.  Musical highlight: the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” Choir singing “Look For The Union Label”.  For four solid hours. January 4:  The Humphrey Institute releases a poll showing that 80% of Minnesotans want the Legislature to pass Mark Dayton’s budget immediately.  Bloggers point…

  • Media: AWOL Redux – Nothing Personal; Just Business

    Rachel Stassen-Berger, writing in the Strib yesterday: Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer is all over the new Republican theme — Democratic candidate Mark Dayton doesn’t have a complete budget plan. Emmer hammered the point, made by supportive Republicans repeatedly during the past few days, on a Tuesday spot on Minnesota Public Radio. “Let’s start…

  • Media: AWOL! Day One!

    Remember in June and July? When the Dayton Campaign, and their minimum-wage minions in the leftyblogosphere, demanded that Tom Emmer release his budget plan? Because without an Emmer Budget Plan in place for their perusal, democracy itself was in mortal danger! The entire media was in on it. of course. Tom Scheck at MPR?  Yep. …

  • Open Letter To Common Cause Minnesota

    [I just sent the following to Mark Dean, director of Common Cause MN, which just filed a complaint against conservative PAC “Minnesota’s Future” for doing exactly what “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota” and “The 2010 Fund” have been doing – or about 10% of what they’re doing, anyway…] Mr. Dean, I’m Mitch Berg,…

  • The Dayton Dust Bowl: Details, Details

    The Twin Cities media continues its ongoing wet tongue kiss of Mark Dayton.  This time, it’s Eric Black at the MinnPost – who sniffs that if you’re of those weirdos that focuses on big principles and visions of limited government getting out of the peoples’ way, then maybe Tom Emmer might be for you.  But……

  • Margin Of Error

    The Minnesota Majority reports (via Fox) that Ramsey County is investigating felons voting in Saint Paul during the ’08 elections: That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race…

  • The Wrath of Hahn

    Can a little known newspaper publisher author a different ending for Tom Horner’s campaign? If there truly exists a halfway point between gadfly and contender in the realm of politics, Independence Party gubernatorial hopeful Rob Hahn has staked his long-on-moxy and short-on-funds campaign on finding just such an electoral sweet spot. A distant undercard to the…