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 Democracy is noisy:

It was, it should be noted, especially noisy from the lungs of one toddler, who screamed throughout part of the ceremony.

“His mother couldn’t get him out of the room,” Brase said.

That’s how tightly packed the room was, and how unwilling many were to even make room for a mom and screaming kid.

It wasn’t just any baby; it was the youngest MOBster, Baby Moose!

It’s time once again for a tradition unlike any other; the 2010 edition of the Twin Cities’ foremost blog award ceremony – the Shooties!

Every year for the Shooties, we honor the worst – and occasionally the best – of Minnesota blogging. And this year is no exception – only more so!

So without any further ado, let’s move on to the awards!  We’ll kick things off with…:

The Dan Rather “Fake Is Accurate!” Award For Journalistic Ethics: This award goes to Erin Maye, “Intern” at “The Uptake”, a left-“leaning” video “news” blog.  While being busted mangling context on a number of stories, Ms. Maye – a “Peace Studies” student – tweeted “I’m Editing.  I feel important because I can make people say things they may not have said.  Muhahaha”.  Prediction:  She will run Gawker Media by 2012.

The Tiger Beat Celebrity Saturation Award:   This year’s TBCSA, given for the year’s best example of “news” coverage that combined slavering saturation with excellence in contextual laxity, goes to the Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey and his ongoing obsession with Bradlee Dean, ultra-mega-super-di-duper fundamentalist evangelist and talk radio host (whose program, “Sons of Liberty”, follows mine at AM1280 every Saturday).  Birkey wrote about Dean no less thatn 23 times in the past year.  But the coverage wasn’t just of a level of saturation that made Larry Jacobs sit up and go “er, wait, he’s overquoted”.  It took vast liberties with context and attribution:

• Birkey wrote in high dudgeon that Michele Bachmann and Tom Emmer would “appear in Dean’s documentary”, My War, without bothering to learn that the “appearances” were from shots of news clippings (or without thinking his audience needed to know).
• Birkey claimed that Emmer gave “financial support” to Dean’s ministry, without disclosing that the “Support” was the purchase of a $250 table at a non-political teen outreach dinner – long before Emmer was a candidate.
• Birkey claimed that Dean said Moslem nations had more integrity than Christian ones because they executed gays. It was a lie.

And more.

The “Dump Bachmann” Award For Unintended Consequences:  Campaigning in the GOP-leaning Sixth District, Tarryl Clark wrote a piece…

…on the Daily Kos.

No better way to paint one as a “reasonable centrist” than writing for “Democratic Underground Lite”.

It probably helped take an eight point race and make it a twelve-pointer.

The Joe McCarthy Trophy For Resurrecting The Letter And Spirit of Joe McCarthy: This one – given for bringing McCarthyism back from the dead – goes to Minneesota “Progressive” Project’s Joe Bodell for his January plea to least think about treating Tea Party sympathies and speaking out against The One and other forms of dissent as “sedition“.  I guess dissent isn’t patriotic anymore!

The Abe Gibron Trophy: After years of humiliating itself by running a smug, ill-informed, badly-written, phoned-in, rote, and talking-points-driven column by Nick Coleman, the Strib changed things up, giving the gig to Jon Tevlin, who turned the column into a smug, ill-informed, badly-written, phoned-in, rote, and talking-points-driven column.

The Jeff Fecke “The Male Client Is Obviously Guilty” Award For Egregious Misandry: This year’s winner is Rachel Nygaard, who took the facts of Rep. Tom Hackbarth’s arrest (he and his carry-permitted handgun were picked up by the Saint Paul Police, inadvertently parked by the Saint Paul office of Infanticide Mart, where he admitted his was having a bit of a clingy snit over a woman’s excuse for begging off on a date; a sign the guy needs to get a grip, not a crime.  So far.  There was no evidence that Hackbarth acted in any way upon that snit, by the way, other than by driving to Saint Paul which is, by the way, also not a crime).  Nygaaard extrapolated this into a Lifetime Movie, with a slavering man beating down a woman’s door and shooting her in a fit of testosterone-induced rage, potentially.

The runner up?  Fecke himself!  After getting this award named after him for his performance in the Duke Lacrosse case, where Fecke was prominent among “feminists” who tried, convicted, castrated and executed three college guys who, it turned out, were falsely accused of rape and railroaded by an unethical prosecutor and a media that looked at the case – a black “victim”, a bunch of smug, rich white boy “perps”, and saw dollar signs.

Well, he’s baaaack with the whole “I, Jury” bit, in re Julian Assange’s very curious “sexual assault” accusations.  (UPDATE: The American Petard exchange reports that petard prices are skyrocketing; those petards are getting hoisted and blown up so fast, production can’t keep up with capacity anymore).

The Yarmagh The Destroyer Award For Rolling A “9” For “Charisma”, Even With An Elivsh Sorcerer Character: A twofer for Joe Bodell, who learned that “cleric” is actually the singular for clergy, rather than a smear against Muslims by the big, bad conservative media. Well, we hope he learned it, anyway.

The Robin Marty Award For Calm, Dispassionate Fact-Checking: Andy Birkey is a repeat winner, here, for his piece impugning the Tea Party for a “threatening message to the local AFSCME office from a regional Tea Party leader” that happened to be neither threatening nor from anyone that anybody in the regional Tea Party leadership had ever heard of, at all (not that Birkey ever bothered to check, much less report that).

The National Concussion Association Poster Child For Blogging While Suffering From A Crippling Brain Injury: Barbara O’Brien from Mahablog.  (UPDATE:  I’m sorry – O’Brien doesn’t suffer from a brain injurty.  She’s just blood-curdlingly stupid).

The Walter Duranty Award: Ezra “The Constitution Is Haaard” Klein and Matt Yglesias, who proved themselves almost as stupid as O’Brien.

The Baghdad Bob Award: This clear winner this year goes to the “Humphrey Institute’s” Professor Larry Jacobs. While the Star-Tribune’s “Minnesota Poll” remained a joke (the virtual-tie Governor race was portrayed as a seven point blowout, but only by telling Minnesota that Democrats were a quarter more likely to vote – in the most GOP year in recent history), the Humphrey Institute poll released just before the election showed it as a twelve-point massacre.  A post-election analysis showed that the Humphrey’s polling over-sampled DFL-heavy areas, but didn’t weight for that oversample the way every credible poll does.  The Twin Cities media may try to offer a defense against the charge that Jacobs, and they, are trying to foment a “bandwagon effect” with the front-page play these polls get in all the regional media – but they haven’t offered it yet.

The runner-up for this award, though, goes to the entire Twin Cities media, into whose coverage of the governor’s race the Humphrey and Strib polls neatly fit.  Their performance – all of them, every one – in this past election was nothing short of shameful.  Faced with a DFL candidate who had embarassed the state in the US Senate, and had multiple run-ins with alcoholism and crippling depression in the past five years, and whose (entirely smear-oriented) campaign was financed by a shady, utterly unexamined consortium of unions and the Dayton Family (including Dayton himself), and whose chemical and mental health state remained utterly examined (barring a perfunctory Rachel Stassen-Berger puff piece run long before the non-wonk voter even knew there was a governor race coming up), the Twin Cities media gamboled and cavorted about with stories of Tom Emmer’s ancient drinking-and-driving convictions, a malaprop about waiter tips (which was not even inaccurate), and whether the post-Citizens United end of the ban on corporate donations (that weren’t from unions or trust fund babies) would end democracy as we knew it.  It was the year that it became perfectly clear that they see their mission to be to comfort the DFL and afflict the MNGOP.

And Finally, The Charles Townsend Award, the keystone award of these entire festivities.  Charles Townsend was a British Parliamentarian in the 1770’s, whose response to the growing “Tea Party” in the colonies…

“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

…was worthy of Larry Pogemiller or Nick Coleman.

This year’s award goes to Governor-Elect Dayton (and, really, by extension every single person who supported him).  The Dayton budget plan was built on a lie, and – quite simply – can not succeed, even notwithstanding the fact that it’s dead on arrival at the GOP Legislature.  Support for Dayton is support for the idea that we, The People, are serfs whose labors exist to support government first.  Then our families.

So for the first time, about 43% of Minnesota wins the award!

Congratuations!

And we’ll see you next year!  Because Goddess knows there’ll be material!

For the past six or seven years (I’ve honestly lost count) we’ve been running the “Minnesota Organization of Bloggers”, the first blogging social organization in Minnesota, and still both the only non-partisan and the only genuinely fun one.

Now, that’s been a lot of fun.  I’ve met a lot of really great bloggers – conservatives, liberals (we don’t bite!), non-political, and every other kind you can imagine – and just plain really great people.

One thing we have not met is “nearly enough out-state Minnesota bloggers”.

It’s not for lack of some effort.  Back in 2005 or 2006 the MOB did a party at the Granite City in Saint Cloud where, I’m told, I sat at a laptop and set up the original incarnation of Gary Gross’ “Let Freedom Ring” blog, which has since become one of the essential conservative blogs in Minnesota.

But I’ll cop to it; the MOB is run by metro-area guys, and it’s mostly a metro-area group.

Aaron Brown at Minnesota Brown (Aside:  I am so glad that he beat Ryan Rhodes and Learned Foot to that title), reprinted at MinnPost, notes the same thing:

I’m biased, but it’s important for people outside the population centers of this country to get involved on the internet and demand attention for issues important to our communities. So much of the internet is similar people of similar opinions and lifestyles talking to each other.

I notice that less among conservative bloggers – but there is a definite “major city” bulge in the blogging demographic.  Perhaps it’s because in smaller towns, you think that on the off-chance anyone is interested in your opinion (that’s the small-town North Dakota guy talking, there), you run into them every day anyway, so why actually write and publish it?  I dunno, it’s a theory.

Even perhaps the ultimate small-market politics blog – Rob Port’s excellent Say Anything, which focuses on North Dakota politics – is a major-city blog, by NoDak standards; Rob’s in Minot, which is to North Dakota as Rochester is to Minnesota.

But I’m with Brown on this next bit:

Whether it’s a good liberal blog [sic] like Bluestem Prairie or a conservative one like Small City Mayor, a Range-based creative outlet like Mesabi Misadventures or a niche blog like my friend C.O.’s Alaska-based What’s in the Shop, it’s important that people know that there’s a world outside of the 494/694 box where life is different, some would say better.

OK, I would say better. But that’s just me.

It is important.  And I’ll just point out that my never-ending quest to find more non-metro bloggers continues as well.

If you’re a reader anywhere, but especially in outstate MN, and you have a blog (or have an urge to get into the game), let me know.

Tammy Nerby is playing the MinneHaHa Comedy Club on New Years Eve.

Well, yeah – Christmas, too.  Of course.

No, I’m actually referring to the seventh annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Winter Party!

Coming just in time to cure those mid-winter, post-Christmas blahs!

Free up your calendar for…well, just free it up!

(OK – I’m thinking February).

Details sometime around Christmas.  (The Russian Orthodox one, I mean).

Speed Gibson on the deflation of the Vikings and, incidentally, The Dome:

[L]et’s hire some of Al Franken’s recount lawyers to charge the Vikings with breaking the [Collapsodome’s] lease for not living up to expectations.

When the Legislature reconvenes, I picture someone like Jason Lewis leading a procession to Mall of America Field as it’s now called, proclaiming: “Mr. Dayton, tear down this Dome!”

I could think of another host who could be persuaded.

He’s also show up at Winter Park to help ’em pack the morning after Zygi Wilf threatens to move the team to Los Angeles if they don’t ge ta stadium.

Over at MDE, Luke Hellier is stepping down and moving on, and turning the blog over to Andy Post and Ryan Lyk.

Thanks for a lot of great blogging, Luke – and welcome, Andy and Ryan!

Gary Gross’ Let Freedom Ring is six years old (yesterday); sorry I missed the big day!

Ryan Rhodes, who usually focuses his blog on Fail and AIDS, turns his gimlet eye to politics.  He analyzes the Tea party…

The TEA in Tea Party stands for “Taxed Enough Already,” which is punchy enough, I guess, but it strikes me as somehow, I don’t know, unconvincing, and definitely not in the least bit funny. If I were to try and organize a national political movement–which I totally could, believe me–I’d want to label it with an acronym everyone would want to rally around immediately.

…and creates a movement whose time may yet come:

To that end I, Ryan Rhodes, am hereby forming the Society Against an Unjust System Advancing Government Excess. This SAUSAGE Party is guaranteed to catch on nationally, and it will be open to everyone, although I suspect there will probably be more men than women. The message of the SAUSAGE Party is similar in scope to that of the Tea Party, but it’s not vulnerable to the same “tea bagger” taunts and similar such juvenile verbal and literary attacks.

So, I decree: Forward, my fellow SAUSAGE Partiers! Together, we can take all those juicy House and Senate seats and put the meat back in Congress! Oh, and Emmer and Demmer, you’re welcome to join us.

It’s not the wurst idea I’ve seen this season.

If you use Google Chrome for your browser, you may have had trouble reaching Shot In The Dark or a number of other Minnesota Organization of Bloggers’ blogs this past few days.

“Blogrolling.com”, the site on which we maintain the “MOBRoll”, or list of links to MOB blogs, apparently became linked to a site that distributes “malware”.  This has bubbled into the virus-watching system used by Google (and possibly others), which trips a big, ugly “warning” page when you try to access pages using Blogrolling.com blogrolls.

I have temporarily removed the MOBroll until either Blogrolling resolves the problem, or a workaround presents itself, or I have the time and energy to move all 100-odd MOB blogs to a private list.

(I’m hoping Blogrolling gets on the stick, just between us…)

Mark Dayton demanded that GOP trackers start wearing uniforms.

That’s not the kind of challenge you put in front of Derek “Chief” Brigham from Freedom Dogs.

He’s got 12 potential designs.  My favorite:

Check ’em all out here.  Details of the challenge here.

It’s actually a contest put on by the MNGOP.  Contenders will be unveiled Labor Day morning at the MNGOP booth at the State Fair.

Might juuuust have to show up for that.

It’s been a solid two years since the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers last elected a Mayor.  Since Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci pulled the plug on Kool Aid Report, the lights at the MOB Secretary of State’s office have been off, the power bill’s gone unpaid, and the screen door is banging in the breeze – so nobody’s had time to hold the traditional election.

Seal of the Mayor of the MOB

The incumbent mayor, Johnny Roosh – who writes for this blog – has served, de facto, two terms as Mayor.  It’s time to oil up the wheels of democracy and take them for a spin.

As such, I have appointed myself Secretary of State for Life (replacing the former SOSFL, Joe Tucci – don’t ask), and I have opened nominations for Mayor of the MOB, 2010 edition!

Nominations first.  Then debates.  Then denials.  Then – mid-next-week, the election itself!

One of the many pleasures of last Saturday’s MOB party was the formal debut of the MOB’s first baby, “Baby Moose”, who is the child of Hammerschwing Ben and Mall Diva, who – this is the funny part – met at a MOB event.

As befits the child, nephew and grandchild of bloggers (the grands are Night Writer and The Reverend Mother from the eponymous Night Writer blog), it’s perhaps fitting that the kid’s already got a blog, at three weeks old.

And the little guy’s tripped into an eternal truth; you really gotta read the label:

example, I’m discovering that many words look and sound the same, but that meaning can change based on context. I’ve also learned that something that looks or sounds good in writing might not be as appealing in practice. For example:

Ok, “butt paste” sounds kind of gross, but it feels SO good. “Butt rub” sounds as if it would feel good, but — trust me — it’s not the same. Why would they even take a chance of confusing someone like that?

So Saturday night was the sixth annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers summer party.

It was a gorgeous night, except for a little rainstorm that swept through about two hours into the party.

And even that was pretty nice.  But we’ll come back to that.

The party focused out at Keegans’ “Druid’s Glen”, their wonderful new cigar patio.

It’s hard to go wrong anywhere at Keegans, of course.

Frequent commenter Bill C and Lassie, from Freedom Dogs and True North

And when it did rain – a little twenty minute gullywasher that drove most of the crowd indoors for a bit – it was really one of the nicest moment of the past few weeks; the rain washed the humidity out of the air, and once the clouds passed through they were followed by a cool breeze that, after the past two weeks of stinking humidity, was worth sitting in the rain to feel.

Don Lokken. He doesn't blog, but I bought an Iron City Houserockers record from him back in 1986.

Reverend Mother and Buddhapatriot

Peg Kaplan from What If?

Melissa, the waitress with the memory of a hundred elephants on Red Bull.

The star attraction, of course, was “Moose” – AKA “Mini-Ben”, the three-week-old son of Mall Diva and Mr. Mall Diva from Night Writer. Mr. and Mrs. Diva met at a MOB event some years ago, got married, and last Saturday brought Moose, the MOB’s first baby and, I think it’s safe to say, the MOB’s First Baby.

Moose (AKA "Mini Ben") with Mall Diva and the Reverend Mother (photo Lassie)

Anyway – hope to see you at the Winter party, this coming February or, if I forget, March…

Second-to-last call here; tomorrow is the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers’ Sixth Annual Summer Party.

When:  Tomorrow, 7PM ’til we’re done!

Where:  Keegans Irish Pub, University just west of Hennepin in northeast Minneapolis

Who: Anyone.  Seriously – if you’re a blogger, would like to be a blogger, used to be a blogger, read blogs, don’t read blogs, hate blogs, love blogs, or have no idea about blogs, you’re welcome.  If you’re conservative, liberal, moderate, libertarian, fringe or apathetic, we’ve got a table and a couple pints of fan-dang-tastic Irish brew and booze, and some pretty fine food to boot, waiting for you!

What To Wear: Totally informal.

What To Talk About:  We hardly ever talk politics at the MOB. Our crowd is eclectic, ecumenical, eccentric, extra-fun…it’s totally worth the trip.

Why? Because it’s August, and you deserve a nice low-pressure night out!

Hope to see you – tomorrow at 7PM!  If you haven’t already, kindly drop an RSVP in the comment section, or at “feedbackinthedark” at yahoo dot com, or on Facebook!

It was a bruising, ugly primary season.  Minnesota – especially all of us of the chattering classes – could use a break, a respite to get together over the things that matter; beer, companionship, beer, cigars, beer, food and beer.

That respite is here!

Saturday is the Sixth Annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Summer Party!  We’ll be at Keegans at 7PM!

Come on down, enjoy what promises to be a glorious, not-quite-so-hot evening in Keegans’ brand-new cigar patio, and hang out at the coolest party in town!

You don’t have to be a blogger; you just gotta love hanging out with fun, interesting people.  And the MOB is strenuously non-partisan; we specifically invite all our DFLer friends who especially need to heal up from this past week’s trench warfare!

Join us!

Don’t forget – the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers’ Summer Extravaganza is Saturday, August 14, at Keegan’s Irish Pub in northeast Minneapolis!

RSVP in the comment section, or go to Facebook and check in there.

The first MOB baby is here!

“Mall Diva” and “Ben” from Night Writer announce…well, actually, no – they’re busy.  Grandpa Night Writer does the announcing:

Finally, at 5:58 [Sunday afternoon] my youngest daughter, Tiger Lilly, hollered downstairs, “Daddy, come see your new grandson!” As I thundered up the stairs I heard a brand new voice — crying at the top of his new but strong lungs — and that’s when my head nearly spun off of my body at the enormity of what had actually happened, right here in my own home, to my own daughter. Just moments ago the only thing we could hear of him was the heatbeat on the monitor, and now — a voice! I’d already well-imagined a face, hair, little fists and feet — but never thought about hearing him for the first time! The stairway seemed to contract on me for a moment as if I were making my own way out into a new world and then I joined the crowd in the bedroom, shouldering my place into line to wait, with arms wide-open, for my turn to hold him.

Little Ben is so far so good.

Congrats to Ben and the Diva and – since being an aunt seems to agree with her – Tiger Lily…

Most of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers’ blogs are actually in, y’know, Minnesota.

But Regular Folks United is a group blog featuring a wide variety of conservative writers – the best known being Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, but also featuring Twin Cities conservative activist Todd Kruse.

And he’s got some good stuff:

Mesa, Arizona resident  Tanya Nareau, age 33 was arrested this week by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department for allegedly “trading her 2 year old daughter for a gun.”

Apparently Nareau traded her daughter to a family friend in return for a gun because Nareau thought the friend would do a better job raising the child.   Perhaps that is the only correct assumption Ms. Nareau made in her life since clearly she does not have the moral code and sound mind needed to be a loving parent.

As an active participant in our right in the USA to keep and bear arms let me call on the gun control advocates out there —  then again I am certain they don’t read Regular Folks United — to explain to me how even stricter gun control laws would have prevented this “family friend”  from giving  Nareau a gun.  Both parties in this unholy ‘trade” clearly do not value life nor do they appreciate the original purpose of the Second Amendment so why should law abiding citizens pay the price via burdensome gun control laws generated by complete idiots such as Nareau?   No amount of “gun control” would have prevented Nareau from getting this gun since clearly no “background check” was conducted by the family friend willing to accept the baby as payment.

And what of the baby’s future?    At two years old a child is old enough to remember who their parents are so pause for a moment to consider this child’s fate —  a mother in prison,   a family friend with a mere “claim of ownership” due to this gun trade, and a likely life of being shuffled along the government social services network until age 18.

It is enough to make me consider adopting this child.

Check out RFU on your daily blog wandering!

Next stop on our tour of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers is…

…well, there’s the hard part.  It’s a blog that Ryan Rhodes has been running for even longer than Shot In The Dark has been on the air.  And practically every time I read it, it’s got a new name;  it started out as “Rambling Rhodes”, but there’ve  been so many names; “Sandwich of Doom”, “Mushroom of Dirt”, and stu only knows what else.  It’s currently “Stained Pants in a Ziploc Bag”.   Who knows what it’ll be tomorrow?

Well, it’ll be full of cool writing, anyway:

Ryan: I really thought I’d have my freelance check by now.

Caroline: I expect mine on the `5th.

Caroline: 15th, even

Ryan: The `5 only comes around during Leap Year.

Caroline: two years, then

Ryan: What’s sad is I initially couldn’t figure out how you made the ` symbol.

Caroline: magical keyboard

Ryan: I was looking at the “1” key, thinking “did she use the Wingding font for that or something?

Caroline: I hot wingdingin’

Ryan: Heh. Wingding. I’m just happy we live in a world that has a wingding font.
Wingding 1, 2 AND 3, no less.

Caroline: Totally. One Wingding isn’t enough. It’s kind of like Ghetto Booty in that way.

Ryan: OH MY GOD.

Ryan: I was JUST GOING TO PROPOSE A GHETTO BOOTY FONT.

Caroline: LOLOLOLO

Read the whole thing.  As in all eight years and change of it.

The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers has been stereotyped as a bunch of conservative bloggers.

And the driving force behind the MOB is in fact a bunch of bloggers who happen to be conservatives.  But the MOB is a lot broader than that; we include political moderates, center-lefties, liberals…

and not a few people who don’t write about politics at all.

One such is Wayne Moran of Questions and Answers.  You could take a whack at his person political preferences from his blogroll – but his blog is about photography.

Courtesy Wayne Moran Photography

Lots of it.

Courtesy Wayne Moran Photography

Oh, there’s writing, too…:

So today I received a call from AARP (Yes the huge senior’s organization).   At first I was thinking I was getting old and they were calling to offer me a membership.  But alas, it was something else.  They were calling to request that I would be their photographer at the Minnesota State Fair.  I would get all kinds of press coverage and get links to my web site and all that stuff bla bla bla…

I had to say No because I disagree with the organization on so many counts.  I told them I support The Association of Mature American Citizens (http://www.amac.us ).  The young man was a bit surprised.  I know this would be a great opportunity and it would be fun, but I had to say NO.   I guess this is an example of doing what you think is right comes at a pretty steep cost.  Oh Well.

I am thinking 90% of my readers will not understand this either, but that also is ok.

…and it’s good stuff.

Whichever you’re into, check it out!

The Sixth Annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB) Summer Extravaganza is scheduled for Saturday, August 14.

We figured the Saturday after the primary, right at the top of the dog days of summer and before the State Fair kicks off, would be a good time to throw a party.

We’ll be following up with a location shortly.

Hold the evening open!

A couple of years ago, Karl Bremer – free-lance shrieking-point-bot and Bachmann Derangement poster child – humiliated himself and his client, Steve “Don’t Ask Me To Sing Oh Sherry” Perry by making up, from whole cloth, a story; that the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers was not only a conservative group, but one where the content was centrally driven by the MOB’s leadership.

In a perfect would, Bremer would look at the membership of Penigma in the MOB and commit purely-figurative rhetorical seppuku.

I consider Penigma a blogchild of mine, albeit of the red-headed stepson variety; after years of leaving, er, let’s say “acerbic” comments in this blog’s comment section, the eponymous “Penigma” (who commented on this blog under a variety of names, and whom I’ve known for twenty solid years, and to whom I owe at least one personal debt of gratitude going back long before either of us thought “blog” was anything but something that happened after cheap beer and gas-station burritos) took everyone’s advice and started his own blog, about this time two years ago.  “Pen” met his co-author, “Dog Gone” – another old friend from more or less the same long-moribund social circle, from the late eighties – via this comment section.

So Penigma’s a leftyblog, and thus wrong about pretty much everything – but it’s well worth a read.  And a read.  And a read some more.  Because I’ll give the staff of Penigma this much:  if you’re tired of the traditional three-paragraph blog post, Penigma will be, let’s just say, a change of pace.  Somewhere in the ether, Leo Tolstoy is smiling.

But “Dog Gone”‘s piece about the impending end of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is fairly good and, as it happens, comports with what a large chunk of mainstream conservatism also believes…well, about Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, anyway.   And the overall tone of the blog is a lot better than the petulant romper rooms full of spoiled rhetorical toddlers that make too many leftyblogs such a waste of energy.

And unlike some leftyblogs – the supremely thin-skinned and gutless Barbara O’Brien’s Mahablog, for example – the discussion at Penigma is often fairly interesting.

At any rate – when doing your daily prowl of Twin Cities leftyblogs, drop by Penigma and say hi!

As I’ve been meandering my way through this very long series of Minnesota Organization of Bloggers blogs, I’ve been skipping blogs that haven’ t published any posts in sixty days or more.  A guy’s gotta know his limits.

I’m making an exception for John “Policy Guy” LaPlante, whose Policy Guy blog has been a fairly sporadic thing for a few years now, and is at the moment offline due to technical issues.

However, a little bird tells me that Policy Guy might be making a comeback soon.  Possible.  Maybe.   He’s busy with work and kids and all the usual stuff that makes blogging such an expendable hobby for so many people – but there might be hope.

This is a good thing; John brings the local blogosphere something that it needs; a blogger than writes about policy and politics from a rigorous academic perspective – but yet makes it interesting enough to want to read regularly.

So I’m writing this to hope it helps build a critical mass of interest to get things up and running.

Back to our regular blogs next week!

Jeff Kouba is one of the best writers on the Twin Cities blog circuit.  He’s written for not a few blogs, including Truth Vs. The Machine, but Peace Like A River Peace Like A River (“PLAR”) has been his home joint for a long time now.

PLAR was, at one point, the host of an awful lot of really fantastic writing; Kouba is as good as it gets when writing about politics (especially Eastern Europe) and religion.

It seems that Kouba, with a platoon of young kids and a busy job, has scaled back some of his original writing, becoming a bit of a rarity at TvM lately.  But rather than letting PLAR go fallow, he’s turned it into…

…one of the better aggregators of online news you’ll find.

A random sample:

United States & the Americas

• Pentagon briefing – Clearly, Iran is — when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, they continue to be duplicitous at some levels, wishing to engage with the government in others, trying to undermine their authority, their sovereignty; clearly trying to make the lives of our — of the coalition forces that are trying to bring peace and stability to those two countries much more difficult.  In some case they — cases, more often in Iraq than in Afghanistan, they have posed a deadly threat to those forces. They clearly continue to pursue a missile program.  They have a very large arsenal in that respect.
• DNI – Office of the Director of National Intelligence Fifth Year Anniversary Celebration
• Washington Independent – Philip Mudd, one of the intelligence community’s leading al-Qaeda analysts, has quietly retired from the FBI, where he was associate executive director of the National Security Branch. Mudd confirmed in an email that he left “about six weeks ago,” but didn’t immediately respond to additional questions about his departure
• AP – A U.S. military jury cleared a Navy SEAL Thursday of failing to prevent the beating of an Iraqi prisoner suspected of masterminding a 2004 attack that killed four American security contractors.
• Al Jazeera – Pro-government protesters in Nicaragua have blockaded the country’s parliament in an effort to prevent opposition politicians from overturning a controversial presidential decree. The supporters of Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s leftist president, took to the streets for a second day on Wednesday following violent protests during which cars were burned and three opposition politicians were lightly injured.

Miami Herald – Paraguay’s leftist president wants to impose military rule in the northern half of the country to help soldiers put an end to attacks by a group of leftist guerrillas. Fernando Lugo is asking Congress to declare a state of emergency in five of Paraguay’s 17 departments.

Hopefully it’s a placeholder until Jeff finds the time to do more of his trademark writing. Either way, it’s a worthwhile stop on your daily trip around the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers.