Disease:  The deference that politicians show the imperial media.

Cure:   New Jersey Governor Christie, who ate and spat out a reporter at a press conference over the weekend:

Reporters were told the governor would only answer questions about a major problem at a water treatment plant, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

Yet one reporter proceeded to ask an unrelated question involving the state legislature, as seen in video of the press conference from Monmouth County.

Christie, cutting him off, said: “Did I say on topic? Are you stupid? On topic, on topic. Next question.”

I have got to find the video.  And loop it.

As the reported tried to follow up, the Republican governor again interjected and ended the press conference.

“Thank you all very much, and I’m sorry for the idiot over there. Take care,” he said before walking away.

Of course, that’s the hallmark – and tool – of someone who isn’t worried about re-election, one way or the other.

Secretary of State Ritchie http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_20964461/minnesota-marriage-amendment-title-chosen-ballot-measurewants to change the name shown on the ballot for the Marriage Amendment.

And Joe Doakes of Como Park is not impressed:

Excellent example of the language battle.  Other possible titles:

“Enshrining Hate In The Minnesota Constitution.”

“Limiting Homosexual Activist Court Tactics”

“Establishing a Second Class of Citizens”

“Limiting” is different from “Recognition” because “Limiting” implies discarding some legitimate options.  That’s not what’s happening – we’re not going from several forms of marriage down to one, we’re recognizing that we’ve always had one form and we intend to keep it.

More than liberal meddling, it’s liberal activism, attempting to influence voters with the wording question.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Given that it’s Mark Ritchie, we should be thankful he’s not calling it the “Family Suppression Amendment”>

Two years ago, this blog led the Twin Cities media in documenting the extent to which liberal plutocrats and government employee unions were buying the gubernatorial race.

Because remember – money in politics is baaaad, unless it’s from a liberal plutocrat…

…like Alita Messinger, billionaire and scion of the Rockefeller fortune and, need we mention, ex-wife and chief bankroller of Mark Dayton.  She is the prime financier of a network of little-publicized groups – “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota”, “Common Cause Minnesota” – that funnel vast sums of money into epic, toxic sleaze campaigns against Republican candidates.

And Alita Messinger is back with a vengeance.  While her epic sleaze campaign against Tom Emmer was able to eke out a win for her ex in 2010,. the uppity peasants went and elected a Tea Party legislature.

And uppity peasants are one thing up with which she will not put:

Philanthropist  [!!!!!!!!] Alida Messinger, the ex-wife of Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, is putting big money into overturning Republican control of the Minnesota Legislature.

Fundraising reports released Tuesday showed that Messinger gave $500,000 to the WIN Minnesota political fund. That group funneled money to the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a Democratic-supporting independent expenditure group expected to sink significant amounts into key legislative races.

Among others, they are pouring money into trying to unseat Doug Wardlow in Eagan and Dave Hancock in Bemidji.

Dayton is asking voters to give Democrats control of the Legislature for the second half of his term.

This story is Berg’s Seventh Law in action; months of caterwauling about the Koch Brothers and “ALEC” have been done, entirely and without exception, to either distract attention from Messinger and her fellow plutocrats’ flow of money, or at least to let them say “Yeah, but you do it too!”:

Messinger’s donations dwarfed all others to independent groups so far this year. Three Republican-oriented funds combined had $380,000 on hand.

In 2010, Messinger was a major donor to funds that ran ads attacking Republican Tom Emmer in the governor’s race, which Dayton won by less than 1 percentage point.

On the one hand, this election is the national debate writ small:  Dayton, like Obama, depends almost entirely on big donors – Obama on Hollywood and Silicon Valley, Dayton on the Hamptons and the government unions – to cling to relevance.

On the other?  The Democrats know they can count on at least 43% of the voters to be ill-informed enough to fall for their propaganda machine’s slop.

The GOP’s freshman class in the legislature brought a lot of good, hard-nosed, idealistic conservatives into office – Wardlow and Hancock and Roger Chamberlain and Mary Franson and King Banaian and many others included, many of whom are on Messinger’s hit list.  They’re counting on the disarray in the state party to help them.

The GOP – especially its freshmen, who largely kept their promises – need your support more than ever.  If there were ever a time for Minnesota’s conservatives – a true Army of Davids – to pull off an upset against the DFL’s League of Plutocrats, this is the time.

Because the GOP Freshmen are all that stand between us and Minnesota becoming a cold Greece.

Jim Treacher notes what many conservative observers have long known; that thing the leftymedia and lefty “alt” media refer to as “fact-checking” is really no more than Democrat narrative-buffing.

“Politifact”, it seems, is less interested in “facts” than in “upholding the Democrat side of the story“.

Matthew Hoy writes:

 

In 2009, Judicial Watch made a big splash when they revealed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been using military aircraft to travel to and from her home district in California to the tune of millions of taxpayer dollars.

The spendthrift nature of the Democrat-controlled Congress was a key election issue in 2010 and Speaker Pelosi’s extravagance was Exhibit A. In response, Rep. John Boehner promised that if the GOP took control of the House and he was elected speaker, he would fly commercial to and from his district. After Republicans won, he reiterated his pledge.

Which brings us to March 23, 2012 and this update at self-appointed watchdog Politifact. Reporter Molly Moorhead referenced documents from the House and the Congressional Research Service and came up with absolutely no evidence that Boehner has been asking for or receiving military transport to and/or from his district.

Going by the old theory that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, Moorhead and her bosses at Politifact, decided that this merited an “In The Works” label…

“In The Works.” You’d think it would be either “True” or “False,” but that’s just because you don’t know any better.

Treacher’s conclusion:

I like PolitiFact’s style: “We can’t prove you’re lying, Speaker Boehner. In fact, there’s absolutely no proof of our suspicion whatsoever. Nice try!”

Moral of the story:  Any time a Media or Democrat (ptr) figure calls themselves a “fact checker”, assume they’re a narrative-buffer until proven otherwise.

The primary Democrat message this year seems to be to try to make every possible Democrat constituency feel like the most noble-possible victim.

We’ve got the “war on women”, “war on immigrants”, “war on over-charged college students”…

…and now, the “war” on those most-benighted victims in our society, teachers, according to this bit by Jeff Kolnick of the university formerly known as Mankato State U of M Marshall.

He tees it up with the story of his friend, a teacher, who is busy…

…surviv[ing] furlough days that cut short his pay as well as the education of his students to save money in tax-starved California.

There’s your first tip-off that our writer is approaching this first and foremost from the left; California is hardly tax-starved.  Cali is indeed a bounty of taxation – it’s why business is leaving the state as fast as it can move.

No. California isn’t tax-starved.  It’s spending-addled.

And after all this service to his community, instead of receiving praise and thanks he has a target on his back. Conservative forces in America have made public school teachers public enemy No. 1: If our schools are failing, blame the teachers. If our states are broke, it is the pensions of the greedy teachers. You name the problem and teachers are the cause.

Well, no.

Teachers, as individuals, aren’t the problem.

It’s the way they, their academy, and especially their public employees’  union and the government that, in California, that union pretty much controls have committed the state to pay for teachers and their (very very early) retirement first, and worry about balanced budgets second if at all, that are.

But Mr. Kolnick doesn’t seem to be interested in economics:

I am sick of it…

…conservative forces blame public school teachers for everything. A colleague of mine related a story to me about a person who blamed public school teachers for failing our students. The person complained that Minneapolis and St. Paul schools failed young people of color and he put the blame squarely on teachers and teacher-preparation programs.

Mr. Kolnick is listed as a history professor at the school formerly known as Marshall.  I bring that up because I’m trying to imagine what would happen if one of his students brought him a paper that started “A friend of mine says that The Jews were behind 9/11.  This paper will demand accountability from The Jews”.  I’m going to guess Kolnick’d send it back for a rewrite – right?

“Conservatives hate teachers because someone that my teacher friend placed as a conservative had an irrational complaint?”

Fed up with this garbage, my friend responded that his kids got a first-rate education in the Edina public schools with teachers who had union contracts and graduated from the same teacher-prep programs as the teachers in the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts.

Let’s stop blaming the teachers and think about public education in terms of the evidence.

Yes, let’s indeed.

Because identical licensing notwithstanding, Minneapolis and Saint Paul graduate less than 3/5 of their students, and a minority of black, Latino and Native American students.  Afro-American, Hispanic and Asian families – who may be personally conservative, but currently vote overwhelmingly DFL – are deserting the city schools, decamping for charter schools and, via open enrollment, the suburbs.

And these are districts that are at the front of the pack for per-student funding, year in, year out.

And I’d suggest that if Mr. Kolnick wants to wave the various teachers’ paper credentials and bureaucratic certifications in those parents’ faces, he not do it while standing on 50th Street or Afton Road, in front of those parent’s cars, as they head to Edina and Woodbury.

But Mr. Kolnick said we needed to make this argument about “evidence”.   What’s his?

The attack on teachers is not about educating our young people. It is about ending public education and collective bargaining. It is about taking public dollars from public institutions and turning them over to for-profit corporations.

So Mr. Kolnick’s “evidence” is a paragraph of Democrat cant about unions.

There is no “attack on teachers”, there is a reasonable questioning whether our society can survive by forcing most of us to work until we’re 75 so that teachers – to say nothing of principals, assistant principals, curriculum specialists, special ed coordinators, and the other throngs of public employees that work in the system but never set foot in front of a classroom –  can retire at 55.

And since Mr. Kolnick asks; since when is collective bargaining “about education?”  For that matter, can you honestly say that the current public education system – not teachers, individually or as a group, but the institution, the entire educational/industrial complex – is “about education?”

In 1995, free-market evangelist Milton Friedman wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post calling for the privatization of the public school system. Now almost 20 years later, we are on the verge of seeing his ideas become a reality…In December 2005, a little less than a year before he died, Friedman wrote of an opportunity to privatize public schools in New Orleans after the tragedy of Katrina. He called for a radical reform of schools because they failed the students. “New Orleans schools were failing for the same reason that schools are failing in other large cities, because the schools are owned and operated by the government”.

OK.

So?

How is this, in and of itself, either wrong or, for that matter, an “attack on teachers?”

The sole purpose of public educational institutions is to educate. They may not be perfect, but they have only one goal.

And that’s at best a platitude, at worst a statement of complete ignorance.  Public schools have always had ulterior motives; “creating better citizens” (free of all those radical immigrant ideas) in the 1800s, or creating a society that reflects the goals of the educational academy today (diversity, multiculturalism)…

…and, above all, to serve as a big interest group and voting bloc, to gain and hold control of the government apparatus that feeds it.

Which is not a knock on teachers as individuals; lest Mr. Kolnick dive further into stereotype, my father, two grandparents and my sister are teachers.

But teachers as an institution demand that I work until I’m 75 so that they can retire at 55 – and vote relentlessly liberal to enforce it – and on the other hand work for a system that, for many of is, is an abject failure, whatever the individual teachers’ personal professional merits.

Do we really want to let corporations be responsible for teaching our young people? Come on, let’s get real.

“Come on, let’s get real”.

It’s always a treat to debate a classical Socratic logician.

Let me ask this:  if we presume a teacher is in fact capable, what difference does it make who pays them – a corporation, or a government body?

And if you can honestly answer that question in terms that aren’t foremost about defending the defined benefit pension, you’ll be doing better than Mr. Kolnick, so far.

Jeff Kolnick is an associate professor of history at Southwest Minnesota State University.

Submitted without comment.

“Netroots Nation” was held, as it always is, in the midst of a throbbing Progressive success story.  This year, it was Providence, Rhode Island – a city that, lying as it does at the nexus of organized labor and organized crime, is the perfect metaphor for the “Netroots”.

It was held in downtown Minneapolis last year.  I spent some time people-watching in between events at “Right Online”, which (usually) follows Netroots around the country to show the world what people with jobs and lives look like.

I shot this video of the Netroots crowd last year, at the 331 Bar in Minneapolis after the convo wrapped for the first day:

No, I’m a kidder. I kid.

But this year, the kids at Netroots – who make the goth kids on South Park seem pretty chipper even in normal times…:

…look even sprightlier.

M John Fund apparently lost the annual National Review poker match, and drew the job of going to Providence to cover the event.

Now, the Netroots kids weren’t particularly high on Obama last year.  It’s apparently gotten even worse:

It wasn’t only last Tuesday’s jarring defeat of public-sector unions in Wisconsin, or President Obama’s refusal to campaign in person against Governor Scott Walker — or unease that the Supreme Court may be only weeks away from sweeping much or all of Obamacare onto the ash heap of history. On Friday, in the middle of the conference, President Obama famously declared that “the private sector is doing fine,” calling into question his campaign’s basic competence in getting out a coherent message.

Indeed, enthusiasm for Obama was decidedly absent from this year’s gathering. Administration officials weren’t invited to attend (Valerie Jarrett and others have appeared in the past), and President Obama limited his role to an unpublicized surprise video shown to delegates late on Saturday, when many people had already left. “Change is hard, but we’ve seen that it’s possible, as long as you’re willing to keep up that fight, I’ll be right there with you,” Obama offered. Not exactly a stirring call to arms, and the tepid applause his video garnered can’t have pleased Team Obama.

That’s the problem with personality-cult politics; if the personality doesn’t start either delivering on his promises or killing off all rivals, things go flat pretty fast.

Found Wednesday’s Stillwater Gazette story about candidates filling in the Stillwater and Washington County area; I’ll add some emphasis:

In District 4, U.S. Rep Betty McCollum is challenged in the Democratic primary by Diana Longrie and Brian Stalboerger. The winner of that race faces Republican Ron Seiford and Independence Party hopeful Steve Carlson.

Huh?

Missing someone?

The GOP’s endorsed candidate is Anthony Hernandez, who b eat Seiford 195-5 in the endorsing convention.  Seiford is going to take that seething pot for Ronmentum to the primary this August, not that anyone cares.

Now, I’ve always believed in Hanlon’s Razor – never chalk up to malice what might better be explained by laziness, overwork, under attention or whatever.

I’ve notified the editor.  We’ll see if there’s a correction today.

What this does tell us is that we Republicans in the Fourth CD have to have our own media.  Please “follow” Tony on Twitter.  Check out his website.  If you can donate a few bucks, or volunteer, so much the better.

The Fourth CD is always a long shot.  But via a combination of…:

• Redistricting making the district a lot more competitive
• Betty being a terrible candidate
• Tony being a great candidate
• All of that “Ron Paul” energy boinging around the 4th CD
• All those Stillwater and Washington County people who are wondering what Betty was thinking, voting against the new bridge…

…this is actually doable.  Provided we get a 150% effort from everyone, of course.

The Star/Tribune editorial board, being in effect a volunteer DFL PR operation, got to work bright and early yesterday doing damage control and trying to build a firebreak against the Republican contagion across the Saint Croix in an editorial that couldn’t be any more perfect a vehicle for national Democrat chanting points if it were being explicitly paid for.

Within minutes of projecting Gov. Scott Walker the winner in Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall election, CNN pundits began earnestly overstating the national importance of the vote.

And someone start singing “The Circle Of Life”, because the left-leaning media – the various levels in the Public Radio chain of command, MSNBC, CNN and of course the Strib itself – leapt into action to understate and diffuse it.

It was an understandable impulse, given the high profile of the attempted recall over the past 17 months. Ener­gized Wisconsin ­Democrats and an outraged organized labor threw everything they could muster at the Republican ­governor, who earned their ire last year by moving to ­curtail collective-­bargaining rights for public employees.

But a closer look at the factors that propelled ­Walker tells us that caution is in order when projecting national implications from his decisive win.

And when they say “closer look”, they really mean “a realignment of the narrative to the Democrats’ chanting points”.

Let’s start with money. Out-of state cash poured into Wisconsin as if the Packers had offered more souvenir stock, and Walker outspent his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, 7-1. Mitt Romney’s campaign won’t have that kind of advantage in November, nor will other GOP contenders in hotly contested races.

Nor did Walker.  The 7-1 advantage was in spending by the campaigns – perfectly kosher under Wisconsin campaign law in recalls, which aren’t covered by the same limits as regular elections.  And it doesn’t count all the spending the unions did on Walker’s behalf. It also ignores – or rather, tries to suppress – the fact that Walker had vastly more support from non-insitutional donors inside Wisconsin than Barrett had.

Walker also faced a middling opponent. Barrett, who wasn’t the first choice of organized labor in the primary, was the recycled loser from the 2010 gubernatorial race.

His second campaign gained so little momentum that President Obama stayed away from Wisconsin, and the president’s single contribution to the Barrett ­effort was a 17-word tweet.

Blame Bush.

Before discounting the impact labor will have in November, however, it’s worth noting that unions won a major victory in Ohio just seven months ago, when voters resoundingly rejected similar collective-­bargaining changes backed by GOP Gov. John Kasich.

Because it was a referendum, because the unions poured money into Ohio, and the GOP wasn’t able to support the proposal as vigorously as it needed to be supported.  The Strib is trying to compare apples and axles.  There’s no comparison.

The recall attempt itself also skewed Tuesday’s results in Walker’s favor. Exit polls showed that 60 percent of voters agree with this editorial board (“Wrongheaded recall in Wisconsin,” June 3) that recall elections should be reserved for cases of significant malfeasance or criminal misconduct by elected officials. They should be the ­direct-­democracy equivalent of impeachment, not a minority party’s response to a hard-fought policy dispute.

And if ifs, ands and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas.   The fact remains the Wisconsin Democrat party has responded to Walker’s upset victory by petulantly hiding out in Illinois, by clogging the Capitol, and by trying to stage an electoral putsch.

Those same polls show that Wisconsin voters would have chosen Obama over Romney, 51 percent to 45 percent.

Those were the self-same exit polls that showed the Gubernatorial race was a “coin toss”. Take them with a big shaker full of salt.

And other recall efforts appear to have given Democrats narrow control of the state’s Senate.

Which doesn’t meet until 2013.  After the next round of elections.  It was a very expensive and meaningless “victory” for the Wisconsin Democrat party.

Those results, too, ought to tamp down GOP victory swells;

Or at least the Strib editorial board is going to try to make sure they do.

Some of them were touting Walker as a future national Republican candidate after Tuesday’s win. Let him prove first that he can cease being the nation’s most polarizing governor and work effectively with both parties for the good of his state. Only then will he warrant the acclaim that was heaped on his victory this week.

He’s a “polarizing governor” precisely because of the petulant reaction Democrats – like the Star/Tribune editorial board – have to the idea of their power, either direct power or the soft authoritarianism of “bipartisanship” that favors Democrats, being challenged.

And the Strib will do what it can to keep Republicans demoralized, downtrodden, and – most of all – home on election night.

Screw the Strib.  I’m celebrating.

…last night when, after a full day of “it’s gonna be a coin-toss!” chanting from the media and leftybots (pardon the redundancy), MPR threw to Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) at 9PM…

…just as NBC, Fox and the AP all more or less simultaneously called the election for Walker as returns showed it wasn’t even going to be close.

And the WPR hosts sounded…crestfallen?  Morose?  On suicide watch?  Big gaps of dead air ensued. the kind of thing that you only hear on Public Radio when things aren’t going according to “The Plan”.  The hostess – her name eludes me at the moment, so let’s just call her Greta Leftmeyer – sounded subdued in the kind of way you do when you don’t want to cry.  Or that’s how I heard it, anyway.

And Public Radio at all levels – WPR, NPR and “No Rant, No Slant” MPR – have been working overtime to keep Democrats off the suicide watch all day.  Notice how few Public or mainstream media operations will refer to Walker beating or defeating Barrett (as he most assuredly did).  Their headlines and on-air ledes invariably (!) say Walker “avoided being recalled”, as if it was some closely-decided question, and that that “decisive repudiation of the Democrat, Media and Union petulant push for a mid-cycle putsch” thing never happened.  Winston.

The lefty noise machine is already busy trying to rewrite yesterday, to keep the dream alive in the minds of the low-information voters that are the Democrat party’s main demographic.

And the other words you never hear (along with “Defeat”, “Repudiation”, “Crush” or “Ass-Whooping”) is “Tea Party”.  Last night was most assuredly proof that the rumors of the Tea Party’s demise were not only premature, they were deception and wishful thinking.  The Tea Party is, if anything, much more potent a force than it was three years ago.  Back then, it was about carrying signs.  Today, it’s about turning low-information voters into smart voters (ergo conservatives) and moving them to the polls.

And the media will softpedal that with all their might.

And, increasingly, they’ll lose.

And that’s a great thing for America.

Steve “Spotty” Timmer, writing in “MNLeft”, yet another lefty group blog:

“They Put The Phyrric Into Victory”

Perhaps they – Craig Westover and Jason Lewis,the subjects of Timmer’s piece  – disagree with Timmer about the current GOP Senator race, but Steve Timmer is the one who put “Phyrric” into “victory”…

…which, for those of us who even passed remedial history, is spelled “Pyrrhic Victory“, after King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who, on noting the casualties he’d taken defeating the Romans at the Battle of Asculum in 280 BC, lamented (according to Plutarch) that “more such victories would undo him”.

Just keep chanting; “they’re the smart ones.  They’re the smart ones”.

Chant.  You heard me.

Oh, yeah – they think Kurt Bills hasn’t a chance.  Maybe they’re right.

The voters – the live, legal ones that the GOP tends to draw – haven’t actually spoken on that yet.

It could well be that A-Klo can eke out a…

…no.  I can’t go there.  Too cheap.

UPDATE:  They edited it.  And it’s still wrong.

Remember – Democrats are smart. Republicans – they’re stupid! Stupid and ignorant! Yepper!

UPDATE 2:  Third try’s the charm.

And, Steve, I’m working these days.  You?

It’s a bit of a whack upside the head to see that George Chapple – better known as “Dark Star” – has passed away:

Chapple grew up in Ohio and Long Island, NY. He was a Vietnam veteran, and originally came to the Twin Cities with his parents in the 1970s.

After dabbling in the auto business, Chapple became known to radio listeners in the 1980s via Steve Cannon’s WCCO Radio show where he handicapped horse races at the newly-opened Canterbury Downs (later renamed Canterbury Park).

Before that, though, he was a regular caller on sportstalk shows all over the Twin Cities, including KSTP when I was there in the mid-eighties.

The brief Strib obit skips past what was a convoluted and almost comical path to sports-radio celebrity.  When I first met Dark, he was hosting a cable-access handicapping show at Canterbury Downs, in the next press booth over from the KSTP Sportstalk show I was producing.  I ran into him again in…er, 1988?  He and, of all people, Mike Gelfand were hosting an evening sportstalk show on the old AM1470 in Anoka, doing a remote broadcast from an old Chi-Chi’s in Brooklyn Center.  In both cases, he bellowed out “Mitch!” – to me, one of the lowliest peons on Twin Cities radio – like I was Steve Cannon himself.

It wasn’t long after that that he got his job at ‘CCO.

And I spent years thinking of that example – going from regular caller to night-time host, one of America’s dream jobs.  And the lesson of that example – make your own opportunities, and be both creative and persistent about it – was in the front of my mind in 2003 and early 2004 when I first broached the idea of an all-blogger talk show to AM1280.

So anyway – RIP Dark Star.

I never actually knew the official anniversary – but I’m happy to send my congratulations to my good friends John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson at Power Line, who celebrated their megablog’s tenth anniversary over the weekend.

You may recall that my blog celebrated its tenth last February; of the Twin Cities’ huge mass of conservative political blogs, it’s Power Line, Ed Morrissey, Lileks, King Banaian of the late SCSU Scholars and the Fraters who’ve been in it since the very beginning.   And sometimes it’s hard to remember, in those pre-MOB days, what a solitary thing blogging was.

For those of you who notice how omnipresent blogs are today, it’s almost funny reading this piece from Brian Ward, back around election time in 2002, when all of us, Brian and Chad at the Fraters and Scott, John and Paul at Power Line were not only brand new, we hadn’t the faintest idea each other existed:

 A month ago I didn’t know of any quality blogs devoted to the local scene, which made me think that perhaps a niche existed that was crying out to be filled. But since then, I’ve become aware of both Power Line and Mitch Berg and they’re both outstanding in exactly this type of coverage (and they consistently link to local media nuggets before I do!) It makes me think that maybe I can dial back my own political coverage and commentary and concentrate more on my real interests. That would be college women’s volleyball scores, my continuing search for the perfect Hungarian Ghoulash recipe, and celebrating the poetry of Leonard Nimoy. Now that’s a niche that needs filling.

It’d be almost a year before I’d meet Brian and King face to face for a drink at Sweeney’s on Dale, and fourteen months before the fateful meeting that led eventually to the forming of the “Northern Alliance Radio Network” – and all that’s happened since.   And in those ten years, John, Scott, Paul and company have built one of the most estimable presences in the conservative alt-media, topped with the rhetorical pelts of Dan Rather and not a few lesser lefty lights.

Anyway, happy anniversary, guys!

How long before Lori Sturdevant starts clucking and exuding victorian vapours that there seems to be no room for “moderates” in the DFL?

Of course, only in a place like Saint Paul could Senator and former police chief John Harrington be considered a “moderate”.  The guy’s got the ABM chanting points down as pat as he ever had the Miranda statement:

“Show me one example of where somebody had fraudulently voted here. Oh, you don’t have one. You have no evidence.

Other than tens of thousands of provisional voting cards – the cards filled out when their vote is questionable, and their ballot is already in the hopper – being returned because the listed person didn’t live at the address?  Other than people listing laundromats as residences?   Dozens of felons convicted?  Hundreds of other cases found, but tossed because, under Minnesota law, “I didn’t know” is an excuse?

Nope.  No evidence at all.

Harrington said he was similarly disheartened during debate this year on the “castle doctrine” self-defense bill, which would have given Minnesotans greater freedom to defend their homes with deadly force. Law enforcement objected to the proposal, saying it could endanger officers, and Dayton ultimately vetoed it.

Of course, there, there’s no evidence.

But while Senator Harrington would be considered, by the vast majority of the US between the Hudson and the Sierra Mare, a “flaming liberal”, he was just tooooo moderate for the whackdoodles of the eastside DFL:

Harrington faced two challengers — Tom Dimond and Foung Hawj — for the party’s endorsement. After four ballots, Harrington had a slight lead over Dimond, a carpenter and former city council member. Delegates decided on no endorsement because it was clear neither candidate could capture the 60 percent needed for the party’s backing. Harrington had 46 percent, Dimond 40 percent, and Hawj had no votes on the last ballot.

Dimond seemed to resonate with delegates who thought Harrington was too conservative for his district and has done little to reach out to Democratic-Farmer-Labor activists since his election. Harrington, however, insisted he was politically attuned to his constituents.

And it’s pretty likely he was.  The East Side is a largely run-down area, hard-hit by the recession, perpetually in transition.  It’s been a destination for new Americans since, well, it existed; wave after wave of immigrants, from German to Irish to Swedish to Italian to Black to Latino to Vietnamese to H’mong to Somali, have coursed through the area, learned to do the American thing, and then moved – first north of Maryland, then out to the ‘burbs.  Most of them are conservatives – they just don’t know that means “republican” in this country.

The DFL “activists”, on the other hand, are vastly more radically left-leaning than their constituents – and farther left than the GOP is to the right.  Harrington – pragmatic local fixer that he is – didn’t pass the progressive purity test.

I’ll await the hand-wringing from the media.

I’ve got stereotypes.  We all have ’em.  It’s one of the ways humans process the nearly infinite number of permutations of human behavior into a mentally-manageable size.

For example, intellectually I know that journalists behave in as many differnet ways as there are journalists.  Indeed, they may be have in up to double the number of ways as there are journos – because not a few journalists behave completely differently in their personal and vocational lives.  I do know this, in my brain.

But the stereotype I have is that journos, drawn as they are largely from the strata of society that is wired to be “progressives”, trained at institutions whose general left-leaning bias has always been omnipresent, especially in the departments (journalism, humanities and social and zephyr-soft sciences) that tend to spawn journos, and who work their entire careers in, and develop entire networks of sources and colleagues and social lives among, institutions that tend to be left of center – government, academia, the activist community and the like, will, when in doubt and the chips are down, swerve left.  Maybe not intentially (although some do), maybe just as a result of confirmation bias (as many do) – but to the left they do indeed swerve.

And part of the stereotype is that that those stereotypical liberally-marinated journos will pick the parts of “the truth” that fit their worldview – aka “confirmation bias” – and pass it along as the unvarnished truth.  Not maliciously, usually, but with absolute certainty that they, or people like them, are indeed the fonts of the absolute indisputable truth.

Which brings us to Erik Black at the MinnPost who, er, minnposted an article the other day  entitled, as luck would have it, Stereotypical Thinking About Political Parties Is Often Just Flat Inaccurate.

When it comes to race, gender and ethnicity, we are urged to guard against stereotypical thinking. But how about when it comes to presidents? How about when it comes to political parties?

Stereotypical thinking about political parties is extremely powerful and often highly misleading, unfair and just flat inaccurate.

As a gun-owning custody-reform-advocating pro-life conservative who is frequently called a violent insecure wife-beating woman-hating uneducated dummy, I could hardly agree more.

So far.

But then Black follows it with

Read the following sentences slowly and carefully.

Scoring the last eight presidential terms according to the spending that occurred under the budget signed by that president, federal spending increased at the fastest rate during the first Reagan term (an increase of 8.7%). It went up the second fastest during the second term of George W. Bush (8.1%). It went up the slowest during the current term of Barack Obama (1.4%.) The second and third slowest periods of federal spending growth occurred under the two terms of Bill Clinton.

These numbers from this piece by Rex Nutting who writes for MarketWatch, which is an arm of the Wall Street Journal. They are based on Congressional Budget Office numbers.

And there, in turn, is a bit of stereotyping from Black; as if the Wall Street Journal byline makes it conservative, ergo against Black’s interest.  It’s just not always so – but, again, that’s why stereotypes exist.

In case you don’t click through, here are the graphics from Nutting/MarketWatch:

..

And since it comes from MarketWatch and the WSJ – journalists! – it must be accurate, right?  It must have compared apples with apples throughout – ya?

You know where this is leading – right?

MarketWatch’s Nutting did not compare apples with apples, but rather swerved between CBO figures and Obama’s own numbers for no apparent reason but with the result, mirabile dictu, of inflating Bush’s (as opposed to his Democrat Congress’) spending and lowering Obama’s in comparison, and uses CBO numbers that are known to be wildly inaccruate.

And he has an infographic of his own.   It’s below the jump (because it’s very, very long)

(more…)

The Forest Lake Times is running a poll to try to undercut new 4th CD legislators Senator Ray Vandeveer and Rep. Bob Dettmer, asking if people support their votes against the stadium.

So if you do in fact support their votes, just for the fun of it, why not zip out to the Flaketimes site, go to the “poll” section in the lower right corner, and vote a “Yes”?

Not that it’s of earth-shattering importance, but the little wins are fun too.

To the Strib editorial board, DFL policy is like that ’87 Taurus you’ve been driving since ’92., on a very cold morning.  Just keep cranking the thing between pumping the gas and eventually – your almost-superstitious faith in that old beater tells you – it’s gonna start.

I was going to write something to that effect.  Joe Doakes beat me to it:

Democrats think Minnesotans should turn government over to Democrats, Star Trib’s main editorial [yesterday].

Nothing like thinking in the precise geometrical center of the box to solidly nail all your hopes to the failed policies of the past.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

And if you whack on the steering wheel, sometimes that helps, too…

I’m going to start a new TV show.  I’m going to call it “Profiles in Leadership”.

I’ve got a few episodes all plotted out.

Episode 1:  After decades of weak mayors who futzed around with “due process” and “the limits of government”, Boss Tweed finally did more than pay lip service to the office of “Chief Executive”, and actually used the office of mayor to lead the City of New York!

Episode 2: Putting lesser religions with their notions of “spiritual commitment” to shame, Revered Jim Jones put the leader back into “leadership”, when by the strength of his example he led his followers to put the “Ded” in “Dedication”.

Episode 3:  Unsatisfied to be a regular businessman, Bernard Madoff led his organization to excel beyond all others in its category!

Episode 4: Mark Dayton truly led “his” state in the quest to stick the bill for a billion-dollar spiff to Zygmund Wilf’s real estate investment on Minnesota’s taxpayers in an example of “leadership” for the ages.

No, the Strib say so:

Gov. Mark Dayton’s savvy and indefatigable advocacy for a new Vikings stadium represents the kind of executive leadership Minnesotans should applaud.

In much the same way that Chicagoans should have “applauded” Al Capone getting the prostitution rackets lined up and paying him tribute.

Unlike his predecessor, Dayton did more than occasionally lead cheers for the Vikings — he delivered on a key campaign promise to the people of Minnesota despite significant political risks.

Unlike his predecessor, Mark Dayton makes no pretense of being fiscally responsible, except where that means “taking other peoples’ money to pay off your campaign chits”.

And make no mistake about it; this was a payoff – to the Strib as well as many others.

The Strib needs the Vikings to be in downtown Minneapolis, to be paying big money on that fallow land the Strib owns near the current ‘dome, and to give it another ready market for selling newspapers.  So do the rest of the Twin Cities media, to a lesser degree.  They knew Dayton was a willing stooge for the downtown Minneapolis business interests that want that state subsidy every bit as bad as Wilf did.

And so the Star/Tribune’s coverage of the election race that led Dayton to office resembled  DFL public relations more than journalism – from their careful white-washing of Dayton’s political record to the election-eve “Minnesota Poll” showing Tom Emmer trailing by an improbable margin that certainly induced not a few Republicans to stay home.

The threat that the Vikings would have left Minnesota without a stadium deal this year was real, although to their credit the team and NFL leadership negotiated in good faith.

The negotiations were done in the same “good faith” the Mob uses when “negotiating” with a shopkeeper who is threatening not to pony up protection money fast enough.

Had this market lost the franchise, we no doubt would have seen an expensive reprise of the effort to bring big-league hockey back to the state after the North Stars left for Dallas.

Right!

And we all know how that loss devastated the State of Minnesota…

…well, no.  It devastated hockey fans, who were upset that “their” team got moved elsewhere by an owner that, like Zygi Wilf, wanted better tribute from the local government.

And it devastated the TV and radio stations and newspaper reporters and (especially) ad execs that covered, and sold ads for coverage of, North Stars games.

Other than that?  The loss of the North Stars had much less impact on this city than the loss of, say, the Ford plant.

Thursday’s passage of a stadium bill ends years of debate over the future of the team and the outdated Metrodome.

And the debate will be “ended” for another twenty years.  Until the next round of NFL owners wants their investments buffed up on other peoples’ money.

Or until someone tells them “no”.

Which would devastate nobody…

…but WCCO, KSTP, KARE, Fox Sports North, the PiPress and the Strib.  

Which, to be fair, at least discloses part of their vast interest in this bit of racketeering:

(Disclosure: The current stadium development plan includes one of five blocks owned by the Star Tribune near the Metrodome.)

But they graze up against the truth at least briefly:

The stadium bill, and the bonding bill that went before it this week, were exercises in effective bipartisan lawmaking,

And there you.

“Bipartisan” legislation.  Everybody wins…

…but the taxpayer.

And that, as they say, is all.

I’ve said it over and over – and every day of new evidence confirms it more; the DFL’s strategy seems to be “say whatever we want to (knowing that the media will never, ever contradict us in public, at least not in a way that the majority of voters will ever see or hear),  regardless of accuracy or truth, to sway the ill-informed, the ignorant, and the not-so-bright.  Because their votes (and whatever else we can jam through the polls) count just as much as the votes of the smart and informed people”.

Case in point:  Education Minnesota president t Tom Dooher’s statement to the media yesterday as the session drew to a close; I’ve added emphasis:

“The 2012 Legislature showed that Minnesotans will have a clear choice in November between leaders who truly value public education and those who view our classrooms as places for political games.

“The Republican majority introduced more than 20 bills targeting public education and educators this year. None of them responsibly addressed the most pressing needs of our students, including repaying the state’s $2 billion IOU to its schools, closing the achievement gap and developing a sustainable funding system for the future.

It’s a lie, of course.

The GOP did, in fact, propose and pass a bill that would have accelerated the repayment of the shift.   Governor Fauntelroy vetoed it.

This, really, shows several things:

The DFL’s campaign – say whatever it takes to win in November, truth be damned, is well underway.  The unions and Alliance for a Better Minnesota will soon be buying up millions in airtime to saturate this state with ads saying “The GOP hates kids”.  Mark my words.

Your children are the DFL’s pawns.  To the extent that the shift actually harms children (it really doesn’t; it inconveniences administrations), the DFL showed this session that they’d rather exploit them in November than pay for their education today.

This is what happens when you let “Right To Work” die in committee.  How wonderful would it have been to have every conservative, Republican member of EdMinn walk of the union out en masse at this hypocritical slander?   Or if the 42% of union members who do vote Republican tell their leadership “uh, not so fast” when the unions spend 95% of their dues on Democrats?

Apparently some genius in the majority caucus figured if they backed off on Right to Work, the unions would play fair this election.

This is politics in Minnesota today; one party does the best it can for a better Minnesota; the other does whatever it can to retain power, truth and ethics be damned.

…to say “Osama Bin Laden believed CNN, CBS, NBC and MSNBC would be friendly to him” – but it’s hard to read this report  from the left leaning Guardian  as much of anything but:

Osama bin Laden pondered the merits of US television news channels as he considered how to extract the best propaganda benefit from the tenth anniversary of 9/11 last year, and concluded that CBS was “close to being unbiased”.

But an American-born media adviser for al-Qaeda warned Bin Laden to beware of the broadcasters’ “cunning methods” as he described Fox News as a channel in the “abyss” that should “die in anger”, CNN as too close to the US government and MSNBC as questionable after it fired one of its most prominent presenters, Keith Olbermann.

Al Quaeda heart Keith Olberman.

No, no, no – again, a cheap shot, saying “terrorists endorse everyone but Fox”.  That’d wrong, wouldn’t it?

And of special interest to bloggers:

But [Bin Laden] also wondered if it would be good to work with an American channel, suggesting CBS as “close to being unbiased”. Bin Laden added that the organisation should approach a British journalist, Robert Fisk of the Independent, and other reporters to press home the message that the major powers would be better concentrating on climate change than pursuing al-Qaida.

Why yes, that Robert Fisk.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Obamacare is in trouble at the Supreme Court. Earlier this week, NBC spent an hour on middle-aged single adults needing long-term care, but having no insurance (and Medicaid doesn’t cover them) so they’re hogging hospital beds at enormously higher cost. One woman actually got sent to a nursing home in Poland and now she won’t be able to see her grandkids. Yesterday, MPR had an interview with some official from Colorado – same topic, same plight.

Same solution . . . everybody must buy health insurance so we can treat these people properly.

Never heard a word about this problem until the Supreme Court arguments went poorly for the Home Team – now they’re flogging the fierce moral urgency to treat a few cases as justification for sweeping aside centuries of precedent. The noble ends justify any ignoble means, it seems.

Ditto “Stand Your Ground”:  the laws have been successful (or, perhaps better still, non-notable) throughout the US.  But the Martin / Zimmerman case gets saturation coverage for two months – just as “Fast and Furious” seems poised to cause Obama some electoral damage?

 And Liberals wonder why Conservatives think there is a liberal bias in the media. Ignore the tone and word choice in these stories, just look at the timing. Obamacare is in trouble, we’re flooded with sob stories. We’re not supposed to wonder at the timing? Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” memos just happened to run exactly 2 months before the election? These stories just happened to run this week, by accident?

From Star Trek, The Next Generation:

Taurik: “Sir, I’m little puzzled. Why are we intentionally damaging the shuttlecraft ?”

Geordi: “We’re evaluating hull resiliency. Starfleet requires periodic testing.”

Taurik: “I see… I don’t believe I am familiar with that requirement.”

Geordi: “Probably because you are not a senior officer. Fire a shot over here.”

Taurik: “That would be consistent.”

Geordi: “Consistent with what?”

Taurik: “With making it appear that this shuttle had fled an attack.”

Geordi: “What makes you think that’s what we are doing?”

Taurik: “The pattern of fire you asked for is similar to what might result if the shuttle had fled an attacker while engaged in evasive maneuvers.”

Geordi: “It’s an amazing coincidence.”

Taurik: “Yes, sir. It is indeed. Shall we proceed with the testing?”

An amazing coincidence, indeed.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

I’m just trying to figure who it is that doesn’t believe the media is biased, who should still be allowed to drive a car on the public freeway.

In an episode of Hill Street Blues (or maybe NYPD Blue, but I think it was Hill Street, on account of the fact that I watched Hill Street addictively, and maybe saw one episode of NYPD Blue), Dennis Frantz’ character (either Sergeant Buntz on HSB, or Sergeant Butt on NYPDB) and his new partner, a young Asian fellow (who, I’m told, was named “Rodriquez”, which seems odd for a character that I recall being Asian) just out of detective school, are cornered and kidnapped by a psychotic killer.

The two detectives are sitting, disarmed and helpless, in chairs facing the killer.

The killer looks at the two men, brandishing the most evil-looking short-barreled shotgun I’ve ever seen.

The killer demands “You don’t wanna die?  Beg!”

Buntz warns his partner “Don’t do it.  As long as you stand up to him, he’s not gonna kill you.  He’s a gutless little worm who gets off on having power over better men”, or something to that effect.

“SHUT UP” yells the killer.  “Beg!”

The newbie looks at Frantz/Buntz/Butt, and then at the shotgun.  And he breaks down, starts to cry, and begs fervently for his life, as Frantz’s face goes white.

There’s a shotgun blast.   You might guess how it turned out, in that Frantz’s character survived the length of both shows (although his showbiz career didn’t).

The lesson?  Don’t be Dennis Frantz’ partner in a Steven Bochco crime drama.

Also don’t give bullies what they want.

———-

Two weeks ago, after an episodewhere U of M professor Bill Gleason accused “The Late Debate”‘s Jack Tomczak of “stalking” him (by showing up in a public building where he publicly announced he’d be, carrying a baby and a stroller), Dr. Gleason filed a complaint with the FCC.

Gleason – a world-class researcher known for his frenetic publication schedule, beaver-like work ethic and outsized stature in the scientific community – said that he’d withdraw the complaint if Tomczak issued an apology on Twitter, on the air, and in writing.  Gleason was to approve the apology.

Tomczak issued the apology a little over two weeks ago.

Apparently because the apology wasn’t delivered with the right degree of self-abasement, and notwithstanding the very high likelihood that the FCC complaint will be rebuffed without much in the way of comment, Hope 95.9’s management suspended Tomczak last week.  That’s why I was on the air guest-hosting last night.

The episode illustrates three things.

Hope 95.9’s management is incredibly naive.  Like Frantz’ partner, they figured that if they caved in to a bully – moreover, a bully with a paper-thin, flimsy case – with enough verve, everything would get better.

Predictably, Dr. Gleason will apparently not confirm that he’s mailed any sort of rescission letter to the FCC.

Maybe it’s because there’s no “rescind” button on the FCC’s online public complaint form.

Or maybe it’s because Gleason has no intention of rescinding his complaint.

And – above and beyond all that – maybe it doesn’t matter.  Because…

The FCC Doens’t Adjudicate Personal Complaints.  It’s in the business – among other things – of regulating the public airwaves, including ensuring broadcasters follow the rules that go along with having a broadcast licence.

Say, hypothetically, that you hear a morning DJ say one of the Seven Deadly Words.  You file a complaint with the FCC, saying your sensibilities were offended.  The FCC’s machinery grinds into action…

…about the time you get an apology from the DJ, who has converted to strict evangelism and is repenting of his ways.

Satisfied, you write the FCC asking to rescind your complaint.

What will the FCC say?

“That’s nice”, likely, but “we’re not here to enforce your ever-changing sensibilities; we’re here to make sure that radio stations follow the rules”.  The Seven Deadly Words were said – ergo rules were broken.  The FCC, legally, jurisdictionally and procedurally cares not one institutional jot about your feelings, then or now; merely that rules about the use of the public airwaves were broken.  You were good enough to report it to them, and for that the FCC thanks you.  Contribute to the station’s legal defense fund, or don’t return the FCC’s call when it asks for more info, it it helps your conscience – but your job, from the FCC’s perspective, ended when you clicked the “OK” button on the complaint form.

Gleason’s offer to “rescind” his complaint is equally meaningless, even if he does send the letter.  The FCC doesn’t enforce rules about not hurting peoples’ feelings; they regulate how stations use their licenses.

That is it.

And either Gleason doesn’t know that, and is being ignorant, or he does, and is being a narcissist.

Barring the overreaction of some naive management, there isn’t a teapot small enough to hold this tempest.  At least not as far as the FCC is concerned.

I’d bank on it.

The sexual shenanigans of John Edwards, Elliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton and Andrew Weiner define the entire history of the Democratic Party. Everything about the Democrats – their beliefs, their policies, their legacy, the intellectual currents that led to the DFL being what it is today – all of it.  Every single aspect of Democrat life and thought in America is defined by affairs, hookers, harassing interns, and sending pictures of one’s wedding tackle.

More locally?  Jim Metzen’s drunk driving arrest is, in fact, the action that defines the DFL Party in Minnesota – all its activities, its policy positions, everything.

And at both levels, those incidents show the brazen hypocrisy of Democrats, in Minnesota and nationwide.

———-

Now, you might read the above, and say “Hey, wait! Those actions, by individuals and small groups, do not, in and of themselves, “define” an an entire party.  They’re the actions of individuals, which have had consequences”.

And you’d have a point.

And my point is, in response, you’d be a smarter person, more logical writer and more ethical columnist than the Strib’s Jon Tevlin.

Although it’s not like you couldn’t see this one coming:

A short history of the current Minnesota GOP, in their own words:

June 2009: Members of the GOP’s Central Committee elect Tony Sutton as chairman.

“Yeah, we’re in soul-searching phase, but I think we’re coming to the end of that,” Sutton said. “I think we’re starting to get our sea legs back. We have to get back to our philosophical roots, so when we talk about fiscal responsibility, we mean it. We have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. ”

June 2009: “We went way off track in the last eight years,” said Sutton. “The party of fiscal responsibility was spending money like crazy in Washington.”

Repeat through a series of quotes involving Tony Sutton and his predecessor, Ron Carey, talking about how they were in the midst of leaving the party in better financial shape than they found it.

And not just leadership.

June 2009: Rep. Steve Drazkowski runs for office, emphasizes his “rural values,” which included tax cuts, fiscal responsibility and gun rights.

And not just money.  No, Tevlin found examples of Republicans uttering the dreaded “V” word – Values.

March 2010: Sutton tells Minnesota Public Radio the GOP is trying to convince Tea Party members it’s returning to core values: “We’re going to have to do it through our actions, not just words. We had spent eight years of being the party of so-called fiscal responsibility, but were spending money like drunken sailors.”

The word is like catnip to partisan pundits from the left and media (pardon, as always, the redundancy), who love bagging on (other groups’) values, when individuals don’t live up to them.

But only when they’re the values of the right.

A columnist could find a rich vein of jape-worthy material on the left, of course.  One could mock the left’s bepspoke “commitment’ to “education”, while they and major benefactor, the teachers’ unions, preside over a system that is (at least in Democrat urban areas) collapsing in every area but budget.

A truly curious columnist could squeedge boundless yuks from a party that proclaims sensitivity to the poor, while marching in lock step behind policies that do nothing but keep them poor.

A talking (typing?) head might cavort and romp around the fact that the DFL keeps gays in line as voters by paying lip service to a concept that they, from their president on down, only rarely support when it’s their actual vote on the line, barring the odd flurry of lip service before elections.

A columnist with genuine interest in holding institutions accountable might note that there is a party whose “values” claim to support children on the one hand but kill millions of them a year on the other, and whose “support” for “the family” is manifested in policies that are destroying the family.

That same columnist might note that the DFL is in plenty of debt itself, even after farming out its messaging operation – the parts that the Strib, WCCO, KARE, the City Pages, the programming side of MPR, and the entire Sorosphere don’t cover, anyway – to the plutocrat-and-union-financed “Alliance for a Better Minnesota“, which essentially does all of the DFL’s PR work gratis.

But Jon Tevlin is none of those.  He was hired to do Nick Coleman’s old job; be the “bad cop” to Lori Sturdevant’s “good cop” on the Strib’s DFL narrative-buffing team.

And that narrative is that this…:

March 2011: Alex Conant, a spokesman for Gov. Tim Pawlenty, assesses the legacy: “Hopefully, Gov. Pawlenty’s record of fiscal responsibility and government reform will be a model for the future.”

…and this…:

March 2011: “I believe so much in that personal responsibility concept and that city officials must be masters of their own fate, as pleasant or unpleasant as it is,” said Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake.

…and this…:

February 2011: All 37 Senate Republicans send a letter to Gov. Mark Dayton that restated their complete opposition to his plan to raise $3.3 billion in taxes, mostly on the wealthy. “We do not have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.”

…are completely, utterly and irrevocably negated by this:

May 2011: The GOP misses the first of many rent payments on their headquarters.

April 2012: The GOP’s landlord files eviction papers against the GOP, saying it owes $111,000 in rent, which it hasn’t paid in a year.

…which serves as a blanket indictment of this…:

October 2011: Hennepin County Commissioner, national committeeman and fiscal “watchdog” Jeff Johnson writes in a blog about Occupy Wall Street: “I frankly get very annoyed at the propensity of some to blame our greatest problems on the free market or successful businessmen and women rather than on government policies and the politicians who have gotten us into this massive mess.

You can tell Tevlin’s a professional.  He uses “scare quotes” to as a written substitude for giggling theatrically when saying “watchdog”, as if Jeff Johnson – who, a columnist with integrity would note, has led the effort to get the GOP’s budget house in order – were some profligate wastrel.

1. It’s election time.
2. The DFL, with no legislative achievements to talk about at any level, needs help.
3. So the Strib will get back on narrative patrol, no matter how they have to waterboard logic, fact, ethics or context to do it.

Expect a “Minnesota Poll” any day that shows Minnesotans think the GOP should sit this election out to sort out its finances.  I’d almost put money on it…

…but I’m way too fiscally responsible for that.

Tonight, I’ll be sitting in for Jack Tomczak on The Late Debate, on the 95.9 in metro Anoka/Ramsey.  TLD is the second-best franchise in Twin Cities conservative alternative media (and hence the second-best franchise in the Twin Cities media) behind the NARN (who else?) and I’m happy to pitch in.

Tonight, we’ll be talking about the foolishness of caving into the demands of a mentally ill troll, because their “promises” for relenting are carved in sand, notwithstanding the fact that his FCC complaint is a fraud and a sham that I predict will get politely ignored, and the very fact that he thinks he can rescind the complaint is itself an indication of his bad faith and abuse of the system, since the FCC rules on offenses against the public airwaves, not on individuals’ ruffled feathers  with Ron Paul supporter Corey Sax about this past month and its impact on the Republican Party of Minnesota.

And in the second hour, we’ll have a True North round table, with a group of writers from True North joining me to talk about the state of the state, the party, conservatism, and our publication.

That’s on The Late Debate – the best way there is to tide over the time between NARN broadcasts!

According to the Twin Cities’ leftysphere and mainstream media:

• Writing thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of abusive and harassing tweets about people you disagree with, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including over “work” hours?  Not stalking.
• Claiming on a large conversation thread on Twitter that someone has been convicted of driving while intoxicated?  Not Stalking.  (OK, it’s legally more like defamation, but it’s part of the previous bullet).
• Leaving dozens, maybe hundreds, of Google-turds all around the web under a transparent sock-puppet ID (whose source is trivially easy to trace), and setting up a sock-puppet website about an embarassing incident (naturally, with the parts that aren’t embarassing carefully excised away for the perp’s enjoyment) under a false but drearily transparent sock-puppet ID,  with the help of a “source” who should have known better (and does, today), and engaging in this behavior against many, many people under many, many monkers and doing that and much, much more with such demented abandon that when something bad did finally happen, he felt the need to make sure people knew it really really wasn’t him who was responsible, this time:  Good heavens, no – not Stalking, silly wingnut.
• Going to a public building, with intentions publicly displayed under one’s own name, with a clearly-stated express intent well within the bounds of free speech, and obeying the rules – including the ones about “threatening people” – and doing it while carrying a baby and hauling a stroller:  “Stalking”

I’ve always tried to treat people the way I’d like to be treated.  Seriously, I do – I mean, a good chunk of the Twin Cities left think that “Expressing any sort of conservative opinion” is a form of assault, but beyond that I do try to keep things on the up and up.

But I have had about enough.

Brian Lambert at the MinnPost reports on the story of…

…sorry.  I had quick chuckle there.  I’ll carry on.

Brian Lambert wrote a piece in the MinnPost about the flap with Jack Tomczak…

…sorry.  I got overcome with a gale of laughter.  OK.  Pull it together, Mitch.  Here we go.

Brian Lambert reported on…

…Oh, my sides hurt.  Holy cow.  I couldn’t carry on with a straight face.  Wow.

OK.  Let’s try this again.  Mark Dayton’s former communications chief Brian Lambert at the MinnPost does exactly what the MinnPost pays him to do; serve as the uncovered intellectual and political id of the rest of the in-the-bag-for-the-DFL publication, in this piece about the Tomczak / Gleason flap (about which you read actual facts last week on Shot In The Dark,

I posted an item recently about a former campaign operative for Tom Emmer and Michele Bachmann accused of stalking U of M professor Bill Gleason.

Not sure if Lambert noted that Tomczak was “accused” of “Stalking” by a dissociative narcissistic lunatic that tweets all day, every day, without cease, ever world-class researcher with the work-ethic of a beaver, honest.

(Note to self: I do have to write a post about what “stalking” is, and perhaps give a few examples from the local blogging community to illustrate it.  Hint:  I don’t think it means going, one time, to a public building, but what do I know?)

Y’see, the problem with Lambert is that he seems to consider “lefty narrative” a better “source” than “crap he hears in passing”…

…although he uses plenty of that too:

Gleason filed an FCC complaint against Jack Tomczak, the former aide. After some negotiating, the local “Tea Party Radio Network” station that carried Tomczak’s show agreed that Tomczak would read an apology on the air.

Er, yeah.

FM95.9 isn’t the “Tea Party Radio Network”.  It’s a little Christian station that plays old-time gospel music when it’s not running Jack and Ben.  The “Tea Party Radio Network” is a network in the same sense as the “Northern Alliance Radio Network” is; a wry little reference to the fact that we both do our shows on a shoestring.  Sort of like AM950, without all the self-righteousness.

As Gleason posts on his blog, Sunshine is the Best Disinfectant…

Bla bla bla.

If you want to know what one of those old-fashioned ransom notes made by cutting letters out of magazine articles would look like if put online the work of a world-class researcher with the work ethic of a dozen beavers looks like, read Sunshine. 

The situation prompted Andy Aplikowski at the conservative blog Residual Forces to post: “Due to a thuggish left of liberal professor’s intolerant tactics, the station that Late Debate with Jack and Ben is on has suspended Jack. It is time to get the best local talk show on a real station. Please contact Clear Channel and get them on air.”

We did in fact cover that here, as well, over the weekend.

But it’s next that Lambert really screws the pooch:

Then, in turn, Ken Avidor at the liberal site Dump Bachmann writes: “…A Twitter cabal comprising of Bachmann fans Sheila Kihne and former St. Paul School Board candidate Tom “Swiftee” Swift is apparently attempting a reprisal by contacting University officials to complain about Professor Gleason.”

No, Brian,

Swiftee’s been pursuing Gleason, all right.  I’ll save the details for later.

But that’s been going on for months.  As in, since last November.  It predated the Tomczak flap by almost six months, and will likely be going on for many more.

And by the way, it allegedly involved a real case of stalking; not a guy walking into a public building, announced and in the full light of day.  Swift’s case involves serious allegations of extremely inappropriate abuses of power.  The kind of thing that might wind up actually getting into newspapers with real reporters, who report on stories with facts and stuff, while Brian Lambert is busy requoting the likes of “Dump Bachmann” with a straight face.

For the record?  A Magic Eight Ball is always a better source than Ken “Avidor” Weiner – or anyone that uses him for a source.  A coin toss, dog entrails or picking random letters out of a bowl of Alpha-Bits is better yet.

And since the subject is “stalking”, maybe we should do a quick post one of these days to remind people what real “stalking” is, and who actually practices it, locally?

But that’s all in the future.  The question now is: will Brian Lambert have the integrity it takes to straighten out his facts on the Swift / Gleason story?