Say what you will about the Minnesota Poll and the Hubert H. Humphrey poll.  As bad, inaccurate, DFL-biased and seemingly-rigged as both are, they both actually release their cross tabs – such as they are.

So far.

With the WaPo’s new practice of sitting on the data for their polls – which, naturally, show that Barack Obama has bounced back – I don’t expect that to last for long.

Ed Morrissey wrote about the new practice:

More importantly, though, the poll series has dropped its reporting of partisan identification within their samples.  It’s the second time that the poll has not included the D/R/I split in its sample report, and now it looks as though this will be policy from this point forward.  Since this is a poll series that has handed double-digit partisan advantages to Democrats in the past (for instance, this poll from April 2011 where the sample only had 22% Republicans), it’s not enough to just hear “trust us” on sample integrity from the Washington Post or ABC.

One cannot determine whether Obama’s improvement in this series is a result of the State of the Union speech, as Dan Balz and Jon Cohen suggest, or whether it’s due to shifting the sample to favor Democrats more so than in previous samples.  The same is true for the Post’s report that Obama “for the first time has a clear edge” over Romney head-to-head.  One would need a poll of registered or likely voters to actually make that claim (one has to register to cast a vote, after all), and one would need to see the difference in partisan splits between this and other surveys in the series to determine whether the movement actually exists or got manufactured by the pollster.

Expect the effort to get Obama re-coronated to result in the extinction of whatever passes for “Journalistic Standards” in the polling industry.

The management at the Strib has apparently decided that even Lori Sturdevant’s grueling one-column-a-week schedule at the paper just isn’t enough.  Now, she’s got a blog.

And there’s another surprise; even Lori Sturdevant has found a left-on-right attack that’s ruffled her feathers; Rolling Stone’s hit piece on Michele Bachmann (you expected any other kind) linking her to the gay teen suicides in Anoka County apparently even pushed her too far:

Rolling Stone magazine’s Feb. 16 issue stretches farther than this Minnesota journalist would in an otherwise compelling article about the suicides of nine LGBT teens in the Anoka-Hennepin School District and the school “neutrality” policy that served them poorly.

(Am I being overly picky in asking “how far would “this Minnesota journalist stretch to attack Michele Bachmann?  Or does Sturdevant need those “layers and layers of fact-checking and gate-keeping” more than we thought?  No matter; it’s a tangent, I know)

The stretch is the story’s attempt to link the suicides with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, the area’s three-term congresswoman and, until last month, a GOP presidential candidate.

Of course, Rolling Stone has become the City Pages of national magazines; both publications, once occasionally the home of some adequate and sometimes brilliant journalism, have turned into the Daily Kos with band tour dates (or in the case of City Pages, the Strib comment section with restaurant and music  reviews).

Anyway – welcome to blogging, Lori!  And don’t let the avalanche of suck that is the Strib’s comment section get you down.  It sure would do it for me.

A while ago, I issued a challenge to supporters of single-sex marriage, and opponents of the proposed Constitutional Amendment on the issue this fall; develop an argument that’ll convince a majority of Minnesota voters that you’re right about the issue.

For a fair chunk of that audience, the “argument” has been expressed as simply chanting “you’re a bigot”, which is a stupid argument.

For another fair chunk, the argument reverts to chanting “we don’t vote on civil rights”, which is a nice platitude.  Also bullcrap.  We vote on civil rights all the time.  Ask any second amendment supporter or opponent of campaign finance “reform” / speech rationing, or academic freedom activist, or anti-“Fairness Doctrine” watchdog.  And that completely avoids the question “is marriage a civil liberty”.  I don’t know that I support the Amendment – but I know that all the best arguments against it come from conservatives.

The dumbest argument of all?  Glitter.

It’s become a fad among the local cutesy-but-inartciulate crowd in the past year; if you can’t manage an actual adult argument (and they never, ever can), throw glitter at them.

The Strib editorial board sounds off against the fad – for all the wrong reasons.  It comes in the wake of some giggle moron throwing glitter at Mitt Romney during his stop in the Twin Cities earlier this week:

 That’s a mistake. Further glitterings, especially of presidential candidates, place everyone at campaign rallies at risk. Security officers must make instantaneous judgments about suspicious-looking people who get close to the candidates and their families. Whether it’s highly trained Secret Service officers or local law enforcement, it’s incredibly difficult in those split-seconds to distinguish someone drawing a weapon from someone pulling out a hidden bag of confetti.

According to the Strib, that’s the reason to stop the glitterings; the safety of the idiot throwing the glitter.

Thjey’re wrong, of course..  The risk to the over-schooled, under-educated, smug little glitter-throwing jagoffs isn’t the main reason to ditch the glitter.

The damage the practice does to our political discourse.  It’s long been a principle of free speech; your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins.  Maybe a couple of feet before, if you’re smart.  Throwing anything at another person is a form of assault; if you did it to a spouse or significant other in the wrong context (the middle of a fight) it could earn you a trip to jail.  As, indeed, it should have for the little prick that glittered Romney.

So what we have in Minnesota -and it seems to be a phenomenon among smug little Minnesota jag-bags, so far – is a group of people that thinks a form of assault, stylized as it is, is a legitimate form of protest.   Of “free speech”.

It makes Minnesota look like an invincibly stupid place.

As if electing Al Franken and Mark Dayton hadn’t done enough damage.

A program that has been taking from the middle class and giving to the rich…

Rising impatience in tax-rich Twin Cities suburbs over a regional program that takes millions from their budgets and awards it to less affluent communities will result this week in the most intense official scrutiny  the plan has ever received.

…for decades, incliuding a bunch of decades where the DFL and Strib-friendly “Moderate” Republicans controlled every facet of government…

A state report due out within days will examine whether the 40-year-old program known as “fiscal disparities,” which quietly shifts $500 million in tax base from one community to the next, is doing what it was designed to.

While some poor communities call the program a lifeline, critics say it artificially props up tiny towns such as Landfall in Washington County and pulls large sums out of increasingly distressed suburbs, while lavishing millions upon affluent communities at the urban fringe.

…as conservatives railed against it…

is finally getting a long, hard look by the Strib.

Now that the GOP runs things.

No, nothing untoward there.  Really.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Surprising to see a sensible opinion piece in Strib. Notice it’s NOT by a staff writer.

It’s by Mike McGroarty, a PR guy who used to write speeches for an unspecified administration.  And it’s the sort of op-ed piece that pops up in the mainstream media during the odd spasm of balance-mongering; McGroarty walks through how much revenue the Feds would make if they didn’t just tax the rich, but actually confiscated every penny they’d had, starting with the billionaires (Bill Gates’ entire fortune would run the entire government for a few days) and working down through all the millionaires, taking every penny, like a power mower moving through a cabbage patch.

You could run the government for a year; read the article.

Doakes: 

But still – the notion that the Strib would even allow this concept to be discussed in its pages is weird. What if somebody were to ask “Hey, what if we did that in Minnesota, as Governor Dayton suggests, how would that work?” People might actually start thinking about how silly the DFL is and then all those years of shilling for Liberals would go down the toilet.

That’s why the Strib runs the article in February – seven months before 99% of Minnesotans start thinking about elections.

Just like they did two years ago, with all questions about Dayton’s alcohol and mental illness records; they got ’em out of the way long before any voters cared.

That’s how they roll…

In Lori Sturdevant’s world, there’s no recession. Money is just….there.

Government creates it. And its allocation is like a chess game between the good guys (the DFL) and those whose names must not be mentioned (Republicans who don’t act like DFLers, which these days is most of them).

Snug a her cube above the city (assuming she comes to the office at all anymore), it’s all just an academic parlor game to her.

I trust that Gov. Mark Dayton included $35 million for expansion of Rochester’s Mayo Civic Center in his proposed bonding bill solely because he shares economic futurist Richard Florida’s vision for Minnesota’s third-largest city.

You go right ahead and “trust” that a politician, playing politics, would allocate budgets based on a “futurist’s” yapping.

Still, things are looking rosy in Rochester:

Its mix of world-class medicine, computing and agribusiness positions it to become the Austin, Texas, of the north. All it lacks is a few smart public-sector sparks — like a bona fide convention center.

Actually, I think two things could be fairly said:

1. If the economy of this GOP-leaning city is, in fact, booming, then they don’t really “lack” those public-sector “sparks” at all, now?  Do they?
2. Right, Lori Sturdevant – what could possibly put the “spark”, the cherry on the sundae of a booming economy like public spending!

I’m sure that prospect, and not the chance to put new Senate GOP Majority Leader David Senjem in an uncomfortable spot, drove the DFL governor’s thinking.

Mostly, anyway.

Let’s stop for a moment, here.

This is the same Lori Sturdevant who charges at Republicans like an enraged schoolmam at the faintest hint of “political games” aimed at the DFL – like any bill that exploits a wedge issue that will put the DFL on the short end of the PR stick – and sniffs with the victorian vapours about the need for “bipartisanship” and “cooperation”.  As long as the DFL is losing.

And when the shoe is on the other foot (or she and her editorial board want the people to think it’s on the other foot)?  Behold, Lori “As Snarky As Sally Sorenson” Sturdevant.

Just so we’re clear on this.

Rochester has been coming to the State Capitol since 2008 to pitch a plan for a 180,000-square-foot, $77 million addition to the Mayo Civic Center. The city is asking the state to pay half of the bill.

I’ll just bet they are.

The City of Rochester does, indeed, make a case that the Civic Center could be a useful addition to the community; it could host more than its fair share of medical conventions alone.  In theory.

Which is fine, but when the state is fighting to get its outgo inside its income, choices have to be made. Nobody likes it when their choice gets the short straw – but you can’t have everything…

…unless you live in Lori Sturdevant’s little world, where unicorns bring money down from the clouds.

But in 2010, the Tea-infused GOP had lost its appetite for projects that could be cast as local pork. After approving planning money for the Mayo Civic Center in 2008, Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed construction funds in 2010.

He did the same to civic center proposals in Mankato and St. Cloud. Notably, all three places elected Republicans in 2010. The class of 2010 came to St. Paul convinced that austerity plays better with voters than do government-funded development dreams.

Right.

Because the Freshman class in the legislatue knows that money doesn’t comes from Studevant’s magic unicorns.  It comes from taxpayers – out of our incomes.

Of course, Sturdevant doesn’t mention that there is all sorts of money in the bonding bill that could go toward the Rochester Civic Center – which is the sot of development that could help make some money and be, hypothetically, of some use.

How many Rochester Civilc Centers could we float for what we’e pouring into another idiotic money-pit light-rail line?  Or the many other wastes of taxpayer money hiding in Dayton’s bonding bill?

Sturdevant is too busy giggling about how “bipartisan” she’s not to be interested in any of that.

“For me, it’s a question of mathematics,” [Senate majority leader Dave Senjem] said. “How do we make this work?”

Danger, Dave.  Math is hard.  The Strib Editorial board and the DFL, via their mouthpiece Sturdevant, can’t do it.

No, it’s in this piece that we see the exposed id of the DFL in big LCD letters, like on the outside of that other civic center built with bonds, the Excel:

The smaller the GOP bonding bill gets, the more Senjem will be torn between the pleadings of his city and the desires of his caucus. And the more Senjem caters to his parsimonious peers, the more Dayton can campaign this fall saying that if Rochester wants state government to help it grow, it should elect DFLers.

There it is – the exposed id of the DFL in full glory.  “Elect us, and you get your toys.  You want toys, don’t you?  BIg mommy State of Minnesota would love to buy you a toy – it’s just big bad daddy GOP that’s keeping it away from you.  Toys are nice!   The money will come from fluffy unicorns “The Rich”!   You like unicorns, don’t you?”

It is the only idea they have – “use cheap and empty rhetoric to gain, or regain, power”.

Sturdevant and the rest of the Strib editorial board like power.  Or liked it, back when the unicorns brought it to them, in their offices high above Portland Avenue.

Check out Carrie Lucking of the Alliance For A Better Minnesota Ministry Of Truth, essentially admitting that Governor Dayton’s Jerbs Plan is exactly what I said it was – a sound bite that isn’t intended to pass the legislature, merely to give the DFL a chanting point designed to give the DFL something to wave in front of ill-informed voters this fall (“Look!  The GOP voted down a jerbs program! They’re taking yer jerbs!”)

Can I call ’em or what?

The DFL has turned its entire messaging operation over to the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, which – as we showed in 2010 – is owned and operated by the unions and “The 1%”,  liberal plutocrats with very deep pockets.

In the 2010 campaign, they raised lying, disingenuity, intellectual dishonesty and cowardice to amazing new levels. They are testimony to the liberal ideal that the ends justify your means – and the only end that matters is gaining and retaining power.  Minnesota’s last gubernatorial election was swung entirely by the fact that ABM was able to find at least 8,000 Minnesotans who don’t read blogs and who took anything they heard from a mainstream media just would not, cou.

There is one rule to remember when reading or watching any ABM production; they are padding the facts, bludgeoning context.  If they say it, it’s a lie – or at the very least, it’s wrong, and anyone who bothers to check knows it.   If Denise Cardinal or Carrie Lucking (ABM’s current and former executive directors stenos for Alita Messinger and Elliot Seid) tell you their names are Denise Cardinal and Carrie Lucking, double-check them. There is an oops buried in there somewhere.  Not sure how, but bank on it.

Their ideal – and the mission for which they are so very well-paid – is to find the Big Lies that will spin the election, and tell them often enough so that just enough dim-witted and gullible Minnesotans buy it.

And this blog’s mission in this coming election is to make sure everyone with a brain to think knows exactly what ABM is; the Big Lie Factory.  The DFL’s “Ministry Of Truth”

It’s what passes for messaging in the DFL these days.  Bankrupt of any real ideas, it’s probably the best they can do.

Can Minnesota do better?

We’re 8,000 votes away.

On the first weekend in March, in about six weeks, the Northern Alliance Radio Network will celebrate its’ eighth anniversary on the air.

Not to be un-Scandinavian-ly immodest, but we’ve built quite a franchise; we dominate Twin Cities weekend talk radio ratings against much bigger stations with much stronger signals, we have become appointment radio for regional conservatives, and if there’s a local Twin Cities talk show with a bigger national footprint, I’m darned if I can think of who it is.  There’s a reason Salem Twin Cities keeps us on the air, and it’s not just because they’re nice guys.

Now, the NARN has always been run by conservative bloggers.  And if there’s anything conservative bloggers have in common, it’s the fact that we come  to mock, taunt, often clobber and, at least rhetorically, bury the mainstream media.   Not, as a rule, to praise it, much less seek their recognition or approval.  Most of us would rather be approved of by used car salespeople – and, indeed, having run a dozen or so remote broadcasts from Paul Ruben’s White Bear Lake Superstore, that is emphatically, literally true for us on the NARN.

So it’s not like we expect the NARN, no matter how successful we get, to ever break the wall at most regional mainstream media; the MSM’s policy has always been to ignore the alt-media until they need to attack it.  And, true to form, the few mentions we’ve gotten have usually been for cases where one or another of us has broken with GOP or conservative orthodoxy in a way that someone or other in the MSM thinks, I suspect, will weaken the conservative coalition, which certainly doesn’t happen often.

So I think we are, as a rule, perfectly happy to work in the Twin Cities media’s shadows, reaching our audience, kicking butt.  We fight way above our weight; we’ve interviewed  Presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, Governors Pawlenty and Walker, Senator Coleman and Grams, Representatives Gutknecht, Kline, Ramstad, Paulsen, Bachmann (also a prez candidate), Mayor Rybak, and too many Senate, Congressional, State Office, legislative and local candidates to even mention, to say nothing of a dizzying array of authors, cultural figures and others, ranging from Ann Coulter to MST3K’s Mike Nelson.

Just saying – we do pretty well without any fawning media coverage.

Which is good, because the regional media has to save all that obsessive fawning for coverage any time an establishment/liberal media figure burps after eating a burrito.

Case in point:  Does anyone remember Jack Rice?  I do, sorta – he was on WCCO for  a while.

Anyone remember WCCO?  I do – sorta.

Rice used to do a show on WCCO.  He was sort of a symbol of how far the station had fallen, about ten years ago.  Beyond that, I don’t know much, because not being 75 and with the Twins and Vikes having long moved elsewhere, I haven’t  spun my dial to 830 for anything but Mischke in a good five years, now.

Anyway, the MinnPost’s David Brauer breathlessly reports that Rice has found a new broadcast home – KTNF.

Does anyone remember KTNF?  It’s the local “progressive” station.  The Northern Alliance Radio Network, on Saturdays, has far more people tuned in than KTNF’s weekday morning drive show, and that doesn’t even count our web stream.    It used to be the Twin Cities Air America station…

…er, does anyone rememberr Air America?

Anyway, Brauer reminds us (with emphasis added by me):

Fans of Jack Rice, the “journalist, lawyer, former CIA officer” and ex-WCCO radio host, should mark their calendars for Feb. 5, when his new 7-9 a.m. Sunday show debuts on AM950.

Hm.  Sounds like appointment radio to me.

Brauer contends…:

AM950’s ratings are a blip (a half-percent of local listeners) and Sundays aren’t exactly prime time, but Rice has led an interesting life and he might spice up your weekend listening when “Weekend Edition” is just too patrician.

And what kind of “spice” can you expect at 7AM on Sunday?

 Says Rice, “I expect my show to be quite different than what I did on WCCO for some five years … Regarding my political approach, I intend to be fair and factual. Of course, I will state my own opinions which I will argue are based upon logical conclusions. So . . . in short, I will be subjective.”

Which is, of course, a novel idea, especially on a station featuring Fast Eddie Schultz.

Oh, what the hell.  More local radio is a good thing.  G’luck, Mr. Rice.  Bring coffee.

You may be in an out-of-the-way slot, but the MinnPost will be there to remind us how vital you are to our political conversation.

SCENE:  At the executive offices of the Alliance For A Better Minnesota.  Executive Director Carrie LUCKING sits near the center of the head table, next to an absurdly-large fake throne.  Her research director , Stephanie FORSTER, sits on the other side.

LUCKNIG:  It’s a gorgeous day out there, isn’t it?

FORSTER:  Um…(steals a glance out the window)…it’s below zero, and the wind is howling…

LUCKING:  (Glares chillingly at FORSTER):  Why do you hate the children?   I SAID it’s a beautiful day.

FORSTER:  It’s a beautiful day. (She slumps silently into her seat, looking abashed).

(Deputy Director Joe DAVIS opens the door into the chamber)

DAVIS:  Our Board!   Announcing Mr. Grebner, Mizz Beadle, Mizz Bergstrom, Mr. Elliott, Mister Blodgett, Mzz Lewis and Mister Goldfarb.

(Jon Grebner (AFSCME),  Kelly Beadle (America Votes), Greta Bergstrom (TakeAction) MN), Brian Elliot (SEIU), Jeff Blodgett (Win Minnesota), Connie Lewis (Planned Parenthood) and Ben Goldfarb (Wellstone Action) file silently into the room.   They file into small seats at small tables arranged  diagonally on either side of a central aisle).

(DAVIS again announces)

DAVIS:  Our legislative guests, Senator Bakk and Representatives Thissen and Dinkler!

(BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER file into the room.  WINKLER steps over to DAVIS)

WINKLER: Um, it’s “Winkler”, not “Dinkler”.

LUCKING (leaping to her feet) SILENCE!

(DAVIS backhands WINKLER, who sits silently, rubbing a sore jaw)

DAVIS:  Womyn and Gentlemyn, Alita Messinger.  All rise!

(The doors swing open, and Alita Messinger enters the room, borne on a sedan chair carried by eight purple-shirted SEIU employees.  They maneuver careful up the aisle and set the sedan chair on the ground.  LUCKING motions to BAKK, THISSEN and WINKLER, who leap to their feet and lay on the ground between the sedan chair and the makeshift throne at the head table.  MESSINGER steps across them and takes her seat).

DAVIS:  You may be seated!

(All sit).

(Purple-jacketed Latino waiters maneuver through the room, filling glasses in front of each seat with a clear liquid).

(LUCKING rises)

LUCKING:  A toast!  To rigorous grassroots independence.

ALL (in unison): “To rigorous grassroots independence!”

DAVIS:  Miss Messinger, I present to you our new executive director, Carrie Lucking.

LUCKING: My name’s not Carrie Lucking.

FORSTER: Actually it is.

LUCKING:  Yes, it is.  Yes, Ma’am?

MESSINGER:  Very well, Mizz Lucking.  Proceed to the…

(MESSINGER glares at DAVIS).  Ahem.

(DAVIS grabs palm front, begins fanning MESSINGER)

MESSINGER:  Very well.  It reports on the progress!

LUCKING:  We are telling the people that a $3,000 one-time tax credit will create 25,000 jobs.

MESSINGER:  That’s absurd.  Only an idiot would believe that.

CARDINAL: Precisely!  It is useless and has no chance of passing – but if it gets voted down, we accuse the Republicans of killing jobs.

MESSINGER:  Only a moron would believe that.

LUCKING:  We know.  I even admitted as much on Almanac last week!

MESSINGER:  This is a campaign that could appeal only to morons.

(ALL are silent).

MESSINGER: And as your 2010 campaign showed, there are 8,000 more gullible morons than smart people in this state.  Well done!  You may kiss my ring.

(CARDINAL and LUCKING kneel at MESSINGER’S feet kissing her pinky ring as SCENE fades to black).

———-

It’s almost time for another campaign season – which means it’s time for another wave of misleading, usually lying, always context-mangled propoaganda from “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (ABM) – the people who brought you the false claims that “Target Hates Gays” and “Tom Emmer campaigned to reduce penalties for drunk drivers”.

The thesis is this: you can tell ABM is lying when their lips are moving or their fingers are touching keyboards.

And we will be dedicating a good chunk of this next nine months to making sure that none of ABM’s lies goes undebunked.

It’s gonna keep all of us conservative bloggers busy.

Stephanie Fenner

Founding Director

Denise Cardinal

For the past fifty years, it’s been one of the most consistent, constant themes in American politics; the media trend left, and when in doubt shades conservatism; conservatives in turn distrust media and its motives.

For the past forty years, National Public Radio has added the cherry of prim, smug elitism to the sundae of media bias.  From Nina Totenberg wishing AIDS on Jesse Helms to the excision of Juan Williams for thoughtcrimes to everything to ever pass the lips of Bob Garfield or Brooke Gladstone, to their burgeoning involvement with George Soros, NPR has been an audio museum of the recent history, mores and prejudices of the American center-left mid-to-upper class for two generations.

For the past thirty-plus years, Minnesota Public Radio has been the soundtrack of Minnesota’s relentlessly-earnest, Volvo-driving, free-range-alpaca-wearing, St. Olaf-educated, Wellstone-worshipping set.  From Garrison Keillor’s corrosive bigotry to the inexplicable employment of Catherine Lanpher to Keri Miller’s on-air toenail-painting of DFL politicians to the incessant, clubby assumptions (my favorite a few weeks ago; my neighbor, Marianne Combs, responding to the fact that four male GOP Senators announced the caucus’ response to the Amy Koch flap with a giggly “well, of course they were all men – it’s the Republican Party!”), MPR is broadly regarded as the new source of record for upper-midwest progressivism,  Of course, this blog owes a fair chunk of whatever prominence it has to Garrison Keillor, if indirectly; It was almost ten years ago that pointing out the screechingly obvious about Garrison Keillor put this blog on the map; my first Instalanche, 30,000 hits or so  back in November of 2002, drove Shot In The Dark’s traffic from 30 visitors a day to 300 a day, literally overnight.  Shot In The Dark is the blog that Garrison Keillor built, in a sense.

And so conservatives and the media – public and commercial – sit like the Hatfields and the McCoys, behind their parapets, winging the odd zinger at each other, secure in their assumptions.

———-

So let me step outside the fortress for a moment and wave a white hanky of truce, and walk back just a tad of orthodoxy.

Because for a good chunk of this past twenty years or so, Minnesota Public Radio’s  newsroom (as opposed to their programming department) has done a decent job of trying to do a balanced, or at least a detached and apolitical, job of covering the news.  It’s not been perfect – but they’ve taken a much better run at it than, say, the Strib’s editorial board.

In and among the bureaucracy down at the Taj Ma Kling, nestled amidst “American Public Media”, is the “Public Insight Network” (henceforth “PIN”), an ongoing project to develop a broader, more diverse set of sources and feedback for their news coverage and programming.

Last week, a PIN producer, Melody Ng, contacted me.  Part of her job – and a very frustrating part, apparently – has been to develop more conservative sources.

And according to Ng. it’s been slow going.

Conservatives apparently like to keep the mainstream media at arms’ length – public or private.

We had a great talk about the whole relationship between conservatives and the media.  My theory – some conservatives are wary of the Jane Goodall-like anthropological approach to some journalists’ approaches to conservatism, in addition, many of us who’ve had some dealings with the mainstream media have seen our words yanked out of context and turned into something we didn’t intend.

(For what it’s worth, my experience with MPR – I’ve been interviewed a few times by Jess Mador, have been a guest on the late, lamented “In The Loop“, and have gotten one of the most flattering comments my writing has ever gotten from Bob Collins – has been good)..

Anyway – I said I’d be happy to help.

And along those lines, I thought I’d toss a few questions out to my audience.

• What do you think about conservatism’s relationship with the regional media, and most specifically Minnesota Public Radio (and, naturally, vice versa)?
• Is engagement with the mainstream – especially (in this case) public – media worth it if your’e a conservative?
• What persuades or dissuades you to/from engaging with an effort like, to pick an example, the Public Insight Network?
• Indeed – had you heard about this particular APM effort?

By the way, Melody has been running a series of surveys over at the PIN’s site for quite a while now, trying to gauge peoples’ opinions.  She’d love to get some feedback on them from you.

• What does “conservative” mean to you?   This one actually resonates with me – I’ve written about what the word “conservative” actually means, depending on who you ask, quite a few times on this blog.
•  What first got you excited about politics?  This one is always interesting.
•  What government regulations help or hinder your work or business?  This blog’s audience has never been reticent about that subject.
•  And here’s a question for the college students in the audiece: What’s it like being conservative on your campus?  That’s obviously a hot topic here – conservatism’s and conservatives’ treatment in education at all levels.  Evan Maloney made a whole movie on the subject; Katie Kieffer could  write a book on the subject, I suspect.

Depending on the answers we see, I may do a survey of my own here, soon.  Stay tuned.

And by all means, sound off!

Perhaps the funniest bit of political/media commentary I’ve ever seen.

Ever.

And I’ve seen a lot.

I apologize, “Daily Show”. All – well, much – is forgiven.

At least on its surface.

But as I watch this, something just doesn’t pass the sniff test.

This blog has attacked Froma Harrop – she of the “Civility Project” who called Tea Partiers “Terrorists” even as she called for “civility” – not a few times in the past.

She’s an idiot, but she’s not stupid.  She can’t be stupid enough not to figure out she’s been shown as a bobble head at least, a corrosive hypocrite at worst?

Can she?

I mean, I don’t know why:  is she trying to push her way past the flap with a little incongruous humor?  Or is the world of the media so utterly insulated that she believes nobody will call her on it?  Or is it just when you’re part of the “elite” media, nobody that matters ever really will call you on it?

I guess “c”.

The new Newsweek cover:

On the one hand, it’s only Newsweek – which will be a shopper by 2015.

But it sort of sums up what will be the media’s approach; Obama smart, critics smash.

The following email was received by DFL Legislative staffers and legislators early last week.

And, via an accident on the sender side, pretty much everyone else in Minnesota Politics.

Members & Staff,

As we prepare for the start of the 2012 session, I wanted to update you all on a few items:

First, thanks to all of our members – too many to mention here – who helped with our Caucus fundraising efforts in 2011. As a result of your hard work and the hard work of our staff, we are in an incredibly strong financial position heading into the elections in November. You’ll hear more about that at our Caucus meeting.

Speaking of that meeting, we will be caucusing at 10 AM on Monday, January 23rd, at a to-be-determined location in St. Paul. The annual pre-session event begins at 3 PM with a VIP reception followed by the general reception at 4 PM. We’d love to have as many members there as possible, and have invited our candidates as well. Frank Hornstein and Marion Greene have also invited members and staff to gather at [address redacted out of basic decency.  Would “Cucking Stool” redact an address?  Pfftt – Ed], after the event. Please RSVP to Marion ([Email redacted]) or Frank ([Email redacted]) if you plan to go.

As you know from Paul’s personnel update email earlier this week, we are making some staffing changes that affect both our official and political operations. Today was Zach Rodvold’s last day in his current capacity with the Caucus. Beginning on Monday, January 16th he will be assuming the role of Campaign Director and will be working from our offices at the DFL. On Tuesday, January 17th [redacted] will return from maternity leave and will be stepping into the role of Director of Caucus and Legislative Services, the job held by Zach until today. Please welcome them both into their new roles.

Here’s the funny part:

In addition, Jaime Makepeace, who has been the Deputy Finance Director for the Caucus, will be moving into the role of Director of Candidate Services. This is a position created to respond to some of the criticism we heard coming out of the last election that some candidates – and some members – didn’t feel like they had a point of contact on the staff if their races weren’t targeted. She’s been working closely with Erin Murphy in our candidate recruitment efforts already and so this will be a smooth transition for her. Please also welcome her into her new role.

Sort of a human border collie?

Finally, a word about redistricting. As you all know, the precinct caucuses will be on Tuesday, February 7th, yet the new lines won’t be released by the courts until the 21st. This will undoubtedly create some difficulties for our candidates and potentially some of our members in going through the endorsement process. Because the new districts lines are unknown, however, and because there are potential scenarios where members may be paired together, the Caucus cannot provide constituent or voter information to anyone outside of your current districts. We will work with the party and with the DNC to ensure that, once the new map is released, members will have access (through the VAN) to the voters within their new lines as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about that or anything else, feel free to contact Paul or me any time.

Thanks, and have a great weekend. I look forward to seeing you all on the 23rd!

Sincerely,

[Name redacted]

Shortly later came the following:

Hi-

Due to technical difficulties with our e-mail database you recently received an e-mail that was intended for House DFL Caucus members and staff. While there are no state secrets included, given the confidential nature of the content we would appreciate if you did not share the e-mail!

Thanks for your understanding and I’m sorry for any inconvenience.

Best,

[Another different redacted person]

Nah, I think I’ll circulate it.  Thanks anyway.

Over at the MInnPost, Karen Boros laments the near-demise of the City Hall reporter. She notes that thirty years ago, both papers, the TV stations and some of the radio operations all had reporters prowling both City Halls, actively working their sources for stories.

Then…?

Then someone invented the focus group – one of those gathering of citizens who are given nice snacks and asked to share their opinions on a product. One of the “products” they analyzed was the television news operation where I was a foot soldier.

What these citizens often said was that they did not want so much government news. They especially did not want Minneapolis City Hall news or St. Paul City Hall news, because many of them lived in the Happy Suburbs. News from the core city did not apply to their lives. Or so they thought.

So according to Boros, people moving to the “Happy Suburbs” (anyone else getting tired of the patronization, here?) got tired of city government news.

It’s a theory.  And I think it’s got merit – only Boros has it backwards.  And I think Karen Boros (who I’m going to use as a surrogate for the rest of the Twin Cities media) are at least in part to blame.

Both of the Twin Cities have been DFL fiefdoms and sinecures for generations – literally.  Since the forties.

And a key part of the infrastructure that has kept the DFL in office, in a place of honor alongside the unions, the public-service bureaucracy and the non-profits, has always been the Twin Cities media, whose bias toward the DFL has been palpable and constant.  No, not each and every reporter, every time; many reporters, even reporters with demonstrated political beliefs, did a perfectly fine job of staying personally detached.  But at the management and editorial level, the bias toward “progressivism” – they like to call it “Good Government” – has been a constant theme.   And that has been one of the many factors that have led the Twin Cities, like most major cities to have become one-party “progressive” hegemonies.

And that DFL hegemony has done what “progressive” one-party rule always does to cities; brought blight, misery, bloated budgets, a culture of entitlement (and I’m not talking welfare recipients, here), decayed and worthless schools.  Like many cities, the Twin Cities are slowly becoming enclaves of the wealthy and upper-middle class (Kenwood, Summit Avenue, Linden Hills, Saint Anthony Park) surrounded by neighborhoods that serve as warehouses for the poor administered by the social service bureaucracy, in turn surrounded by suburbs full of those who’ve had the option to secede from the system.

And the media dutifully played along, doing its bit to keep the DFL firmly in charge.  And a large part of the reason for the decline, decay and rot of the Cities must certainly be that when Boros conjures all those “tough questions” from the reporters of the past, it was never enough to make voters question the wisdom of the ruling one-party states the Cities had become.

And, tired of being the ATM machines and ripe sucks for the system, people moved to what Boros sneeringly calls “the Happy Suburbs”.  They pulled out of the the schools – leaving the school systems skewed and warped, and begging for warm bodies to put in seats.  They took jobs in the “Happy” and productive suburbs, skewing the machine’s assumptions about demography (and prompting an orgy of spending on transit and punitive taxes to try to corral them back downtown.  They moved to redder zip codes, changing the traditional political assumptions and slowly eroding the DFL’s power base, prompting ever-more-desperate gerrymandering to try to shore up the DFL’s power base.

For a couple of generations, people have been voting with their feet to try to reduce the power of the DFL, its minions and its machine in their lives.

Why should they want to get dragged back to it on the 6PM news every night?  It has nothing to do with them.  And they spent a lot of time, effort and money to make it that way.

Times and technology change. Now, those Minneapolis City Council meetings are telecast on Channel 79.  You can watch from the safety of your own living room as council members debate the fees to license a dog or work their way through the budget.  But you can’t ask questions after the meeting like a reporter can if they are in the building.

But if the reporters had asked the “tough questions” that really needed to be asked over the past sixty years – is this spending wise? Is Urban Renewal/tearing down Rondo and Phillips to make way for freeways/warehousing the poor in the inner city/the war on drugs a good idea in the long run?  Why do our schools get worse, the more money we throw at them? Is one-party rule, even if it is rule by people who reflect our worldview, the way to get better Cities? – then there might not have been a problem in the first place.

And if there are two competing reporters in the building, you know that each of them will be trying to get something for their story that the other won’t have. News is still a competitive business — which is why I miss that crowd of reporters.

But the media stopped asking the “tough questions” that mattered decades ago.  And long before bloggers took over the “asking tough questions of the DFL” beat that the media stopped bothering with, the people asked them themselves.  They did the only “City Hall Reporting” that really matters, and asked the toughest question of all; “are the taxes, the trouble, the crime, the denigration, the eroding standard of living, the systematic disenfranchisement of dissent, worth it?”

And the answer sent them not to the news stand, but to the, ahem, “Happy Suburbs”.

Boros blames the people who fled the cities for wanting news that made her beloved, mythical hard-nosed gumshoes obsolete.  But the media machine played its role in the flight in the first place.

Will they ever learn that lesson?

The media knows that Obama’s in trouble.  An incumbent elected in a near-landslide should not be flirting with “unelectable” numbers in the face of the GOP offerings in this campaign.

And so look for any pretense of “objectivity” to be more a joke than normal…

…as we saw in Saturdays’ debate, where George Stephanopoulos reprised his prior career as a Democrat spinmeister:

When questioning former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Stephanopoulos, a former senior advisor in the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton, premised some inquiries on the assertion — offered without supporting facts — that Romney’s job-creation statistics were inaccurate.

“Now, there have been questions about that calculation of 100,000 jobs. So if you could explain it a little more,” Stephanopoulos asked Romney of the former governor’s claims about jobs created by companies he has helmed. “I’ve read some analysts who look at it and say that you’re counting the jobs that were created but not counting the jobs that were taken away. Is that accurate?”

“No, it’s not accurate,” Romney bluntly responded. “It includes the net of both. I’m a good enough numbers guy to make sure I got both sides of that.”

Stephanopoulos did not cite any analysts by name.

All mainstream media – from the Big Three down to the Star/Tribune  – will check all claims of detachment at the door for the next 11 months.  Between now and November, I predict, will be the nadir – so far – of the American MSM’s propensity to bias.

Every once in a while you run into a lawyer – or wannabe lawyer – whose idea of argument is to tell you “you’re not positive you don’t not know you’re right, are you? Are  you?  ARE YOU?”

The idea, of course, is to bog your own sense of logic and reason down with so many non-sequiturs and strawmen that you’re not sure you don’t not know you’re right.

Or something like that.

It may not make sense the way I explain it.  But if you watch what the partisan media will be doing this next eleven months, somehow it all makes sense.

It fits in with the great sales bromide “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS”.

Which brings us, for the final time, to Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s WaPo op-ed earlier this week in the Strib, which is to this year’s effort to make people ignore the question “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

Third, the media’s obsession with false equivalence: How the election is covered will almost certainly have a measurable impact on its outcome.

When we think of this, conservatives may think of things like “the inexperienced and radically-connected Barack Obama not getting vetted as much as your typical mid-sized city mayor, while GOP candidates get their records gone over with electron microscopes”, or “The Twin Cities media gave Tom Emmer and all his contributors the equivalent of a rectal exam, while the sum total of the Strib’s coverage of Mark Dayton’s well-known mental illness and alcohol issues was a single story the January before the election, about eight months before anyone outside the wonk class gave a crap”.
That’s not what Vanden Heuvel means, of course:

The New York Times’ Paul Krugman describes what he’s witnessing as “post-truth politics,” in which right-leaning candidates can feel free to say whatever they want without being held accountable by the press.

There may be instances in which a candidate is called out for saying something outright misleading; but, as Krugman notes, “if past experience is any guide, most of the news media will feel as though their reporting must be ‘balanced.’ “

[MItch doesn’t even know what to say here.  He’s at a loss for words. I mean, the obvious – “Paul Krugman has become the nation’s crazy great-uncle, slowly descending into madness as the family watches the disintegration around the table every Thanksgiving” – but Krugman’s a gimme.  The idea that someone could say “political reporters strive for balance” is absurd on its face; the idea that they pull punches on Republicans because they want to appear balanced is less deranged than “there’s a bunch of elders of Zion that have these evil protocols…” only in a moral sense.  Anyway – Mitch is otherwise at a loss to address that last bit, and invites contributions from his reading audience – Ed]

In that world, candidates can continue to say things that are “flatly, grossly, and shamefully untrue,” as The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne described it, without fear of retribution.

Obama has traveled the world and “apologized for America,” says Romney.

Except that, no, he hasn’t.

Wait – so the media is “biased toward conservatives” because they don’t attack conservatives’ opinions of Obama’s “America Last” philosophy in slavish detail?

The stimulus “created zero jobs,” says Rick Perry.

Except that it created or saved at least 3 million.

Wait – the media is “biased toward conservatives” because while reporting Republicans campaign rhetoric, they don’t counter with Obama Administration chanting points, which are themselves wrong and largely unchallenged in the mainstream “conservative” media?

Obama is going to “put free enterprise on trial,” claims Romney.

How does he square that with the nearly 3 million private-sector jobs created under Obama policies in the past 20 months?

And then, agreement with the Administraiton’s chanting points is the barometer of truth?

These three factors are key not only to understanding this campaign and election but to seeing just how far we have to go to reclaim a democracy that is driven by the people themselves.

The biggest factor in going as far as you “have to go”, if you’re on the left, is making people see everything but how far they’ve slipped since 2008.

Think the media is up to the job?

The Strib seems to be getting into its A game.

More over the next ten months or so.

The job of the part of the media that supports Democrats and Obama – let’s be honest, it’s most of them – is starting to coalesce around and about the big killer requirement for anyone who wants to see Obama re-elected: divert people from the essential question “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” by all means necessary.

Which brings us to Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s WaPo op-ed, which appeared in the Strib earlier this week.

 Second, the rise of super PAC spending: Among the most devastating consequences of the 2010 Citizens United ruling is the rise of organizations that are not required to disclose their donors but that can recruit and spend unlimited sums in direct support of candidates.

As opposed to the unions, which also recruit and spend fundamentally unlimited money in support of candidates, and had enough clout to get themselves mostly exempted from campaign finance reforms during the Bush years.

That money is apparently juuuust fine.

Thus far, these super PACs have reported spending nearly $7 million. Fred Wertheimer of the watchdog group Democracy 21 told USA Today that the organizations represent “the most dangerous vehicles for corruption in American politics today.”

But not unions – perish the thought – which have their own SuperPAC and have been flooding Washington and every state house with money forever, with no end in sight, and which apparently is not a “dangerous vehicle for corruption”

While super PACs may not coordinate directly with campaigns, there is little means of effectively enforcing that rule.

The treasurer of Mitt Romney’s super PAC, which spent $3.1 million in Iowa running mostly negative ads against his opponents, served as chief financial officer of Romney’s first presidential campaign.

Jon Huntsman’s super PAC, which has spent $1.9 million, is bankrolled, at least in part, by his father. President Barack Obama’s super PAC is run by Bill Burton, his 2008 press secretary and a close adviser who left his White House post to gear up for the election.

The question about super PACs is not whether they will have an impact but how big it will be and whether a people-powered movement can stop them.

…and what SuperPAC will bankroll that “People-Powered” movement.

“Campaign Finance Reform” is, inevitably, an effort to silence conservative speech.

And the only spending Vanden Heuvel cares about is the spending dedicated to sending Barack Obama back to community organizing.

By asking the question:  “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Tomorrow – Vanden Heuvel gets really dumb…

The premise is that the mainstream media wants Democrats elected, and seeks the defeat of Republicans.

It can be an unconscious thing – most reporters are liberals, so it makes sense that their coverage will subtly shade things – or a very conscious one (like, I suspect, the past 25 years of the Strib Minnesota Poll and HHH Institute Polls or the assembled life’s work of Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman).

And as we head into election time, the media faces one challenge – and the challenge is big enough to warrant bold italics.

The ideological media’s mission is to keep people from asking and answering the question “are you better off than you were four years ago) under any circumstances.

(Except in states like, say, North Dakota and Minnesota, where the mission is to obscure the reasons that people are doing, if not better than four years ago, at least better than the rest of the country, which is of course behind the Strib’s effort to portray Mark Dayton as the engine behind MInnesota’s success, despite his complete legislative failure).

Which brings us to the op-ed from the WaPo by Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation, dutifully h reprinted by the Strib the other day, and which is such a clear object lesson in the media’s approach to diverting Joe Public’s attention from the bold-italic question above.

No, really.  After the requisite sane and sober start…:

My advice in the weeks to come: Don’t let the giddiness of the campaign coverage distract from what will really matter.

…Vanden Heuvel all but restates my premise – “ignore how your’e doing and focus on these shiny rhetorical objects!” – word for word if not motivation for motivation; I’ll add emphasis:

Instead, pay attention to three issues that could affect the outcome of the election, even though they have nothing to do with the campaigns themselves:

It boggles the brain.

First, a surge in voting restrictions: In 2011, 14 states passed laws making it harder for certain Americans, particularly minorities and young people, to vote.

Leaving aside the patronizing bigotry – “minorities and young people” can’t find a driver’s license?  The franchise for which their forefathers fought and died isn’t worth the effort that it takes to get and carry a damn free state ID? – the issue is an attempt by the left to create a bloody shirt of grievance to try to motivate youth and minorities, who turned the election for Obama in ’08, and who are, inconveniently, looking to be extraordinarily un-motivated this time around (Afro-Americans, and Latinos).

The goal is to keep traditional Democratic constituencies from casting ballots, and methods include requiring voters to show government-issued IDs (which more than 1 in 10 Americans lack), reducing or ending early voting, and disenfranchising citizens with criminal records.

If I were a Democrat, I’m not sure I’d like Vanden Heuvel’s insinutation that the irresponsible, the criminal, and those to lazy and unmotivated the legal right to take an hour off from work to vote are their natural constituencies.

Vanden Heuvel trots out a slew of innuendos that cater to the ill-informed – who clearly are a Democrat constituency:

In Texas, for example, a concealed handgun license is a sufficient form of voter identification, but a university ID

Because a carry permit actually is evidence that one is a permanent resident at an address, in a way that a university ID is not.

In Wisconsin, a voter without an ID needs a birth certificate to get one, but a voter without a birth certificate needs a valid ID to obtain one.

Then…change the state law?

In Tennessee, a 96-year-old African-American woman was denied a free voter ID because she didn’t have a copy of her marriage license.

Right.  Because government never makes mistakes.  And because outlier cases define the issue.

NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous has described the efforts as the most coordinated attack on voting rights since the days of Jim Crow.

And if you can count on anyone for measured, logical rhetoric when the time comes to distract people from the question “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”, it’s Benjamin Todd Jealous (/sarcasm off).

There’s a larger philosophical question that is ripe for debate – “is it possible to make it too easy to vote?  One should not discouragie people from voting, of course, but the Democrat model of corralling everyone they can find and driving them like compliant sheep to the polls – frequently not knowing anything about the issues or the candidates – doesn’t speak well of our democracy.

But that’s not the issue, here; it’s “watch the media work start to work overtime to try to divert the voter’s attention away from the real questions in this election.

Tomorrow, the next rhetorical shiny object – big bad money (from Republicans only, naturally).

For all of the talk about the GOP’s debt, Tom Scheck at MPR notes that the DFL is also the red:

There has been a lot of attention given to the finances of the Republican Party. It should be noted, however, that the DFL Party is also facing a debt.

DFL Party Chair Ken Martin said the party has a debt of roughly $210 thousand heading into 2012. Martin said the party had a debt of $750 thousand at the start of 2011.

Not huge news – this blog reported on the $750K debt years ago.

The funny part is reading the comments in the MPR piece.   You get the impression that a lot of DFLers are shocked that the press would bother with the DFL.  Further proof, I think, that Democrats expect the media to be on their side, when push comes to shove.

It’s part of the reason Twin Cities DFLers seem to be unable to meet conservatives in a ratoinal debate, ever; their entire worldview is formed by schools, colleges and a media that barely recognizes alternatives to the left exist.

As of today, AM1280 is making a big programming change.

The Walter Winchell Mark Levin show will be moving back to the 11PM-2AM slot.

And – this part, I like – the Dennis Miller show will be moving up to the 8-11PM shift.

And I’ll cop to it, I love it.  Not a huge Levin fan – but I love the Miller show.

So now, hopefully everyone’s happy.  But for one, I certainly am.

Dear Twin Cities (and National) Media:  please use this handy guide for identifying firearms.

It’s vetted by the NYTimes, so you just know it’s right:

Via regular commenter Seflores and Ace.

NOTE:  OK, on a more serious note:  this is a subject where the media’s vaunted “fact-checking” is more often than not humiliatingly bad.  And it’s on a subject where the vast majority of Americans are better-than you are or could reasonably make them.

Why not admit ignorance, shut up and learn something?

And sometimes “I haven’t said anything” has an implied “…yet” after it.

One the most dull-witted bit of comment-section rhetoric is the old “I see you’re silent on…[some issue you haven’t written or spoken about]”, usually written to imply “silence equals assent”.

I’ve had a few commenters, tweeps and other people say “I notice you’re completely silent on the issue of the MNGOP “Sex Scandal”, the “coverup”, and the principals involved”.

Well, there’s a grain of truth to that, in that I haven’t written anything on the subject.

Yet.

There are a few good reasons for that.

I Have Little To Say:  All of the principals in the case are, to some degree or another, friends.  More importantly, they all have families.  Others may believe that their ends – pillorying the opposition – justfify their means, including piling on a couple of families who, let’s be honest, didn’t ask to be part of this.  So go read them, if that’s what you want.  But before you do, remember…

If You Ever, Even Once, Said “It’s Just About Sex” During The Clinton Administration, You Need To Just Shush: Seriously.  It’s private business.  It didn’t affect government.  Move on.  Just mooooove on.

Some might respond “But the relationship was inappropriate!  What kind of management style is that?”  To which I respond:

It’s An HR Issue:  Is every complaint about “inappropriate relationships” aired out in the media where you work?  Not until it goes to court, if at all.

Yeah, I know – Koch is an elected official in a position of some considerable power, so it’s a little different.  Suffice to say I have no opinion.  Yet.

But…

Much Of The Discourse On The Subject Has Nothing To Do With Amy Koch:  The “relationship” with the unnamed male staffer is the issue that’s got a good chunk of the Twin Cities leftyblogosphere cackling away with their prurient, projection-addled glee.  A name has been popping up, over and over again.  But none of the MSM’s sources on the subject have gone on the record with that name yet – not to a standard that a “real” news media outlet can run with yet.

And I’ll confess this to you all right now – I hope the “rumor” is wrong.  And I hope that the reason the subject of the tittering speculation is lawyering up is because so many of the Twin Cities’ leftybloggers and less-scrupulous media outlets have stuck their tender extremities into a meatgrinder; that they’ve defamed the “rumored” staffer, and done it because they  ignored the standards of fact-checking required to defend a defamatory assertion, and exercised “reckless disregard for the truth” – which is a form of “malice” under Minnesota defamation law that might, with a good lawyer, be enough to void the First Amendment protection they’re all hoping to hide behind.  I’ll cop to it; my Christmas cheer is marred by a hope against hope that the next year sees an awful lot of smug leftyblogging and City-Pages-writing prigs bussing tables at Panera to pay off a humongous legal judgment.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

But What About The Coverup?:  We’ll see.  I’m going to do something that a whoooole lot of – I’ll be frank – dumber bloggers could stand to try; waiting until I know enough to have a perspective worth writing.

Now – as to all of you leftybloggers and comment-section-lawyers who haven’t specifically condemned the massacre at Katyn Wood?  Why do you support Russian genocide against the Poles?

Does your silence speak volumes, or what?

I’ve been tangling with Karl Bremer for a long, long time.  Like,since long before any of us had ever heard of blogs.

Now, if this blog has had one iron clad standard, it’s that politics comes in behind humanity. This hobby – an offshoot of people doing what they believe – is frequently a stewing noxious morass of Alinski-ite ugliness. And so I never go after peoples’ jobs, their family lives, or, especially, parts of their pasts that aren’t germane to their political job.  Wherever else I may have fallen short, I’ve stuck to that.  

And beyond that?  Peoples’ lives are more important than their politics.

So it was a genuine gut-shot to read this last night:

Three weeks ago, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Tomorrow I start chemotherapy to try to destroy it. I’ve fought a lot of battles in my life and beaten some long odds. None of them have ever been life-threatening, though, so at this point, they all seem rather inconsequential.This one’s for real, and I’m going to need all the energy I can muster to beat it. Consequently, you may see a little reduction in flow here at Ripple in Stillwater. I’ll be recycling some old material to keep you entertained in the meantime

Best wishes and hopes that Karl kicks the odds in the ass.

One flap I missed in this morning’s rundown of the present and future of the MNGOP was the railroading of Brandon Sawalich.

Sawalich was arrested last week for driving a truck with expired tabs.  The airport police grabbed and detained him, and initially moved to charge him with a gross misdemeanor that means, essentially, “tax evasion on wheels”…

…before they discovered a “clerical error” that showed his tabs were six, not 18, months out of date.  Anyway – it led Sawalich to bow out of the MNGOP Chair race (prematurely and for all the wrong reasons, according to some, and I don’t entirely disagree).

Mr Dilettante covered the “story” as well as anyone – and by “story”, I don’t mean Sawalich’s utterly mundane offense, but the media’s approach to covering a prominent Republican, which D accurately termed more a “rectal exam” than news coverage:

So, Sawalich is out of the race, has paid for his tabs and is presumably going back to being a private citizen. End of story, right? If you thought so, you don’t understand the modern media environment. The Star Tribune saw fit to add a completely gratuitous paragraph to the end of his account, detailing events in Sawalich’s life that happened 8 and 10 years ago, respectively. If you want to see what they are, you can click on the link, but I’ll not share them here. Sawalich is apparently 36 years old, which means that the events in question happened when he was less than 30 years old. In other words, even though he is now out of the race, Sawalich was Emmerized.

To the editorial board and, I suspect, not a few of their reporters, Republicans are like wild boars; you have to make sure they’re dead.  There’s no such thing as overkill.  Classic example; the Strib’s coverage defamatory lynching of Alan Fine in 2006; 32 column inches about a “domestic violence arrest” that never resulted in a conviction, had no physical evidence, and was completely expunged, that ex-wife in question had herself garnered a domestic violence record, and the widely-abused nature of these sorts of charges – all to smack down a candidate who might have gotten 35% with a tailwind and without a Ventura Party candidate who made moderate-to-Republican noises.  Such are the precautions the media must take to ensure the victory of a deeply-flawed, yapping little schnauzer like Keith Ellison.

There’s a message in that last paragraph — if you would seek to be a prominent Republican, or even prominent in the inner workings of the party, you can expect to have every indiscretion of your life shared with the world. So you’d better damn well keep your light under a bushel.

That’s what Alinsky preached.  It’s what the DFL – and their willing accomplices in the media – practice.  It should surprise nobody.

I have a few for today.

It’s virtually inevitable that some lefty commentator – probably a leftyblogger, but very possibly a media commentator – will blame yesterday’s shooting in Grand Marais on Minnesota’s concealed carry law.

It’s also pretty much a lock that the Strib and MInnPost’s columnist stables will paint the departure of Amy Koch as Senate Majority Leader as “proof that conservatives are becoming too unruly and powerful”, notwithstanding the fact that Koch is a conservative.

Just saying.