The Mission:

Step 1: Induce a government shutdown specifically to cause pain among those dependent on government.

Step 2:  Get a compliant media to fix blame on the legislature;

Sylvia Hernandez Cruz holds her 5-year-old daughter on her lap and practices letters, as she sits on a couch in the small rambler she rents on the edge of Moorhead.

Cruz says she’s trying to plan for a possible state government shutdown. She’s trying to stock up on basic grocery items, and making sure her son’s asthma prescription is filled before the end of the month. She’s not sure if she will be able to afford those things next month.

“I’m pretty much making it month to month. That’s the situation I’m in,” said Cruz.

Cruz is among the thousands of Minnesotans who receive food assistance and medical assistance. She’s most worried about medical costs. She doesn’t know where she would come up with the $200 a month to pay for her son’s asthma medication.

Cruz says she’s e-mailed her local legislator, Republican Rep. Morrie Lanning. But she feels helpless following the budget standoff in the news.

…notwithstanding that the legislature submitted a balanced budget, and Governor Dayton’s latest attempt is a solid billion dollars off.

Step 3: Lather, rinse, repeat until the DFL tells them to stop.

Andrew Breitbart caught in avalanche of douchebag effluvia:

And I’d be amazed if a majority of leftybloggers don’t consider this “reporting”.

To think I coulda spent a couple days covering these yapping little juveniles. (Assuming they would give press credentials to an unbeliever).

At its very, very best, watching the Twin Cities mainstream media covering inter-party politics between the DFL and MNGOP is a zen-like experience; you hope, in the best of all possible worlds, for some rudimentary balance.

To wit: Bob Von Sternberg over at The DFL Casserole The Strib’s “Hot Dish Politics” blog tips his hand as re his editorial sympathies, just a tad (with emphasis added):

Members of a legislative budget commission met for the fourth time Wednesday, for the first time moving past their shopworn soundbites as they picked through the details of Gov. Mark Dayton’s just-released plan to shut down state government if a budget deal isn’t reached by July 1.

Hm.  Wonder if any of Dayton spokesbot Bob Hume’s “soundbites” – which, on Twitter, read exactly like a chron job executing a Perl script – qualify as “shopworn soundbites” to Mr. Von Sternberg?

And in something of a role reversal, Republicans — whose budget-balancing strategy relies entirely on spending cuts…

Nope.  No bias there.

On the other hand:

…accused the Democratic governor of proposing the shuttering of government services that will deprive Minnesotans of essential services. They cited his plans to shut off the flow of aid to public schools and halt payments to health and human services providers.

“Whose budget is more draconian,” demanded Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, using the word Dayton has often employed to describe the GOP’s spending cuts [albeit not, apparently, a “shopworn soundbite” – Ed.]; she called his shutdown plan “complete hypocracy. [sic – Ed.]”

On the one hand, it’s the first coverage I’ve seen in the regional mainstream media of the accusations that Dayton has been staging the shutdown, and seeking to amp up the “pain”, at all.  That’s good.

On the other hand, I have this strong sense that it’ll be the only coverage the Strib spends on it – tucked safely away in a blog that only wonks read.

After the commission meeting House Minority Leader Paul Thissen returned Dean’s fire. “I am stunned about the Republicans’ concern about the delay in the delivery of certain government services as a result of the shutdown, but have shown absolutely no concern about permanently and devastatingly cutting those same services,” he said. The GOP’s health and human services cuts “are what I would call breathtaking,” Thissen said,

Note to Rep. Thissen; then perhaps you and your party should have advanced a budget of your own…

Republicans also used the hearing to resume their drumbeat of criticism [Let me guess – a “shopworn” drumbeat? – Ed.] of Dayton’s negotiating style, complaining that he has remained aloof from the process.

“We had a meeting a week ago, I guess, and the governor didn’t attend that,” said Rep. Keith Downey, R-Edina. “I’m just curious in the last week, the last couple days, do you have any information you can provide to us[about] how many meetings the governor has actually been in on the shutdown versus how many meetings the governor has been in on the detailed grunt work of negotiating a budget agreement versus how many meetings the governor has been in on the Vikings stadium?

“That might be telling to us [to show] where the governor’s priorities are, based on where he’s spending his time.”

Yes.  It does, doesn’t it?

I have a couple of predictions for you.

Prediction 1:  Polled To Death – Take this to the bank:  sometime before July 1, the Strib will run another “Minnesota Poll” in re the shutdown.

The poll’s headlines will be within one rhetorical standard deviation of  “65% of Minnesotans Favor Compromise On Budget Impasse”.

The crosstabs, carefully buried, will show that DFLers are oversampled by 50%; those trying to investigate the faint whiff of metrocentrism in the polling will be frustrated by the absolute lack of crosstabs showing geography.

Prediction 2: Dead Silence – Despite the avalanche of evidence coming out of the state bureaucracy that Dayton is not only pushing for the shutdown, but actively trying to make it “hurt” as much as possible, there will be not one word on the subject from the Strib, WCCO, the PiPress, the KARE Bears (whose John Cronan is rapidly shaping up to be an Esme Murphy-grade stealth-DFL  propagandist), or MPR.

Place your bets.

Or make your own predictions, in the comment section.

When I saw the headline on the Minnesota Birkeydependent – “Backers of gay marriage ban seek to prevent disclosure about campaign spending, donors” is how it reads – my spidey-sense just knew it would be in there.

What, you ask?

That little thing that’s there whenever any talk of campaign finance disclosure – by Republicans – comes up.

Stay with me, here.  Birkey writes:

The groups behind a ballot measure that would put a ban on same-sex marriage in the Minnesota Constitution urged the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board on Tuesday to retain a rule that would allow corporations to make unlimited contributions in support of the ballot measure. The Minnesota Family Council (MFC) testified that it shouldn’t have to disclose any of its donors in the campaign to pass the amendment, while Minnesota for Marriage, of which MFC and the National Organization for Marriage are a part, brought in attorneys from the Citizens United Supreme Court case to argue that political spending by corporations on the amendment push should be shielded from disclosure laws.

Now as you know, I favor scrapping all restrictions on domestic campaign contributions – but requiring all campaigns and parties to immediately, as in “within one hour of receiving the donation, and before cashing the checks”, disclosing all donations on the internet, and keeping those donations available for years.

But that’s not really the point of this post.

No, it’s this.  Indeed, I skipped over most of Birkey’s piece, until I found what I knew I’d find, immediately, upon reading the headline:

But the majority of the testifiers supported the board in changing its opinion on corporate disclosure.

Mike Dean of Common Cause Minnesota said, “Minnesota has a long history of supporting disclosure.”

He said it helps the board gather and detect violations and cited a complaint his group filed against the National Organization for Marriage and the Minnesota Family Council over ads the groups ran in 2010 that they did not report.

“Having this knowledge allows the public to make informed decisions,” he said. “The public has a right to know who is making this political speech. Without the knowledge about who is making political speech, the public can’t evaluate the information or misinformation.”

Fascinating assertion, coming from Mike Dean…

…who leads “Common Cause of Minnesota”, which agitates for transparancy (on the part of non-“progressive” organizations)…

…and whose organization shows $600,000 donations last year, every penny of them anonymous.

Yet again, as we watch the political contortions of Anthony Weiner, we see the great political truism; it’s not the act, it’s the cover-up.

And as we’ve seen over and over and over again, there’s nothing the media likes more than unravelling a coverup.  Of a Republican (or a Democrat who, like Weiner, has been deemed a liability).

So let’s talk cover up.

While the GOP presented a balanced budget in May – long before the DFL had done in the previous couple of biennia – Mark Dayton, who never presented a balanced budget and thus in effect never presented a budget at all, vetoed it after weeks of stonewalling.

Evidence is emerging from various Human Services and Department of Transportation sources that Dayton planned this shutdown all along.  The fact that the Administration and the Legislature were eight tenths of a percent apart shows that Dayton has no interest in negotiation.  In the meantime, he – his surrogates at “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, the attack-PAC funded by the unions, Dayton’s ex-wife Alita Messinger, the Dayton family and Mark Dayton himself – are running ads, constantly, trying to blame Republican intranigence for the shutdown.

And you only hear about it on the blogs.

On Channel Four, where Esme Murphy spends her every Sunday morning painting the toenails of DFL politicians?

Nothing.

On Minnesota Public Radio, which just finished a huge lobbying campaign to defend their federal and state subsidies because their “no rant, no slant” news coverage is just too vital to allow to allow any cuts?

Where are Mike Mulcahy, Tom Scheck and Tim Pugmire?

The Strib?  It’s no secret we don’t expect much of the newspaper of the “Minnesota Poll“; the paper that ran its sole story about Mark Dayton’s history of alcoholism and mental illness in January of 2010; half a year before the DFL primary, and a good nine months before 90% of the voters even knew there was an election coming up.  Still, one might think someone at 425 Portland would figure there was some utility in, y’know, covering the news.

Rachel Stassen-Berger?

The PiPress?  Does Bill Salisbury actually transgress the DFL?

Channel 5? Paging Tom Hauser; there’s a there, there.

Where is the media?

It was probably Sunday or Monday when the lefties started tittering about Sarah Palin’s visit to the Old North Church.

And “tittering” was all they managed.  Even Erik Black, one of the phalanx of “deans of Minnesota political journalism”, was reduced to embedding a “ThinkProgress” flakvid without any additional commentary – which is, in and of itself, a pointed commentary on the regional leftymedia.

Jill  Burcum, editorial writer for the Strib, is seemingly being groomed to take Lori Sturdevant’s place in the “smug, entitled DFLer” slot on in the stable of columnists.

And she boldly strode where no talking head had gone before.

During a visit this week to Boston, she recounted a twisted take on Paul Revere’s historic ride. In a nearly incoherent stream of phrases full of folksy dropped “g’s” (ringin’ those bells, warnin’ shots), Palin appears to have said that Revere warned the British, when in fact he warned Americans about the British.

I’m a kidder; I kid. Burcum followed the same narrative the entire leftysphere follows. up and down its chain of command, from Media Matters down through the Strib’s editorial row to the Twin Cities’ leftyblogosphere; “Wimmins who are conservative are teh stoopid”.

With the dropped g’s and the history flub, Palin is such a caricature of herself that it’s hard to tell if this now-viral video is a Saturday Night Live skit or the real thing.

For whatever reason, Burcum comes back to Palin’s accent over and over in this piece – to a degree that I’d call “a Saturday Night Live skit”, if SNL ever did skits about Midwestern editorial writers so desperate to confirm their parochial need to feel superior that they have to resort to catcalling someone’s accent.

And I have a hunch you could look in vain through Jill Burcum’s entire clipfile in vain, trying to find any mocking of Hillary Clinton’s artificial swerves into “Sista” slang, or President Obama’s curious habit of slipping out of his Ivy-League pronunciation into a phony “Black” patois, when speaking in front of black audiences.

Revere, according to historical documents, was captured by the British. Under questioning, sometimes with a gun to his head, Revere said he had warned revolutionary forces that the redcoats were coming.

Arguments that this means he warned the British, as Palin defenders claim, are more than a stretch. That Palin had that detailed level of knowledge about Revere’s ride is even more unlikely, especially in context of her meandering statements about Revere’s “ringin’ those bells.”

It’s “unlikely”?  One wonders why Burcum is slaving away as an editorial writer when a career as a mind-reader awaits.

The Massachusetts Historical Society was asked about the matter on Monday. In a statement, it said Revere’s mission was to warn the revolutionary forces: “The Society holds three accounts written by Paul Revere. Based on these accounts, Revere was sent out to warn colonists that troops were marching west.”

Gauging by the excited people around Palin in her video — none of whom went “huh?” at the Revere reversal — she’s lost none of her star power. That should concern the Minnesota Republicans who also harbor presidential ambitions.

But gauging by the excited people around her — none of whom went “huh?” at the Revere reversal — she’s lost none of her star power. That should concern the Minnesota Republicans who also harbor presidential ambitions.

Bachmann – unfairly derided as Palin-lite — is expected to declare her presidential candidacy soon. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty has already announced his bid.

A quote that didn’t make the Palin video makes her gaffe even more head-scratching and hilarious.

Somewhere during the course of her Boston visit, she uttered this phrase, according to the Boston Globe: “You’ve got to know a lot about our past in order to know how to proceed successfully into the future.’’

Words to live by.

Oh, yeah – according to historians, Burcum and Black and “Think” “Progress” are wrong, and Palin was, well, closer to right than any of then would credit her for being:

Palin prompted howls of partisan derision when she said on Boston’s Freedom Trail that Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”

Palin insisted yesterday on Fox News Sunday she was right: “Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there. That, hey, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms.”

In fact, Revere’s own account of the ride in a 1798 letter seems to back up Palin’s claim. Revere describes how after his capture by British officers, he warned them “there would be five hundred Americans there in a short time for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.”

Boston University history professor Brendan McConville said, “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.”

Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British.

You should read the whole thing.

And remember – a conservative is smarter after a concussion than a liberal who’s just graduated from Princeton when the subject is history, as anything; if you read it in the leftymedia, distrust but verify and, almost inevitably, distrust even more.

The regional leftysphere is tweeting up a busy little storm today; as the MNDFL noted on Twitter, “Former head of the MN Business Partnership: the @mngop budget is a “job-killer””.

The uninitiated might think “Wow. That’s quite an indictment of the GOP budget!”

And the tweet linked to a Strib article, entitled “The governor’s budget plan won’t send businesses scurrying“, by one Roger L. Hale, which didn’t do much to disturb that conclusion.  I’ll let you read it yourself; if you’re observant, you’ll note the subtle red herring; tax hikes might not send businesses “scurrying”, but it’ll inhibit them from forming in the first place, or hiring more Minnesota workers.  What good does having 3M or Best Buy or Ecolab plopping their headquarters here do us if they’re not expanding, building and hiring?

But the DFL and Strib (pardon the redundancy) are even less transparent and more perfidious than meets the eye.

The Strib piece notes that Hale is “…a former: CEO of Tennant Co, director of five NYSE companies, chairman of the Minnesota Business Partnership and the Governor’s Workforce Development Council, and successful start-up investor.

And to those who don’t pay much attention, a businessman is a businessman is a businessman.  And probably a Republican.  Right?

Wrong.

Roger Hale, as I noted last summer, contributed six figures to “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”; $110,000 as of this time last year, and tens of thousands more to other DFL candidates and organizations.

But the Strib didn’t see fit to let the reader know that.

The fix is in.

Yid with Lid on the big winner of the Wiener kerfuffle – Andrew Breitbart:

After ten days of being vilified by left wing media reporters, those same reporters were tripping all over their underwear trying to ask him questions about the story they had doubted until today. Not only that, but at the behest of the same reporters who trashed him personally and his stories, Breitbart stood where Weiner was about to stand and demanded an apology from the slanderers in the press, and from Congressman Weiner himself.

Breitbart, like all of us in the center-right alt-media, knows that the gesture is just for show.

Andrew shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for their apology (and he knows that). You see, the progressive agenda-driven mainstream media looks at Andrew Breitbart and sees the devil himself.

Breitbart and his team of editors and contributors (of which I am one) are everything that the press hates. We find the facts that either they don’t find or they choose to ignore, and we reveal them to the public. As the guy whose name is on all the sites, along with being the content director and a reporter, Breitbart’s job is to publicly take the body slams directed at all the writers including himself.

Breitbart and his organizaation actually are what a lot of us in the center-right alt-media have been dreaming about for nigh on a decade now; a well-funded, motivated, conservative alt-media powerhouse that eats the bigs’ lunches consistently enough to cause the Big Media Machine serious problems.

Let’s face it, Breitbart’s “Big” sites not only shoot down the progressive media’s political idols, but they make the press seem incompetent for not reporting those stories themselves.

I’m already having fun with the 2012 cycle.

On the one hand, I guess conservatives should be happy the Strib actually published Michael Brodkorb’s a takedown of the Strib’s systematic bias in covering political rhetoric:

…I’m always impressed by the speed in which the Star Tribune editorial page will throw the foul flag on comments from [State GOP chair Tony] Sutton and me, while ignoring hyperbolic rhetoric from Gov. Mark Dayton, DFL Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk and Minnesota DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin over a potential government shutdown (“Sutton’s boorish behavior,” editorial, May 28).

It’s nothing new, of course; exposing the Strib’s institutional bias and ethical perfidy has always been the seed corn of the Minnesota conservative blogosphere.

But the double-standard has shifted into high gear this year, as the Strib’s editorial board circles its wagons to try to protect Dayton.

In the final days of the 2011 legislative session, GOP leaders in the Minnesota House and Senate provided DFL Gov. Mark Dayton with an opportunity to speak directly to both legislative caucuses. It was a historic bipartisan meeting, filled with the discussion and debate that Minnesotans expect. In this private meeting, both Gov. Dayton and the GOP legislators were respectful of differing views.

How did Dayton reward this olive branch from the GOP leadership? He publicly attacked the legislators who politely asked questions of their governor by calling them “extremists” and by saying they “know little about government and care even less.”

Rather than using his powerful soapbox to rally Minnesotans together, he chose to take a swipe at the mothers, fathers, teachers, veterans, Cub Scout leaders and small-business owners who serve as citizen legislators. Dayton attacked, but the Star Tribune editorial page was silent.

Did I say double-standard?

Good:

[Senate Majority Leader Tom] Bakk, who earlier in the session flat-out refused to produce a budget solution, was speaking to the press, comparing these same hardworking GOP legislators to members of “cults.” It’s worth noting that while Bakk has time to stroll the halls of the State Capitol launching personal attacks on citizen legislators, his caucus hasn’t found any time to provide substantive budget solutions.

It seems the only “budget” work the Senate DFL Caucus has done this year is cashing in its legislative pay and per-diem checks. Bakk attacked, but the Star Tribune editorial page was silent.

Finally, Martin ended the week with a frantic news release, decrying Sutton’s and my political statements about Dayton’s “erratic” leadership style. This, of course, is the same Ken Martin who said on TV hours earlier that GOP legislators would have “blood” on their hands if state government shuts down. Martin attacked, but the Star Tribune editorial page was silent.

I’ve been writing this for months; the DFL is running the first-year law school play; “if the law is against you, argue facts; it the facts are against you, argue law; if the facts and law are against you, argue like hell”.  They’re stuck with a population that tossed them from office by the palette-load last fall, and a governor who has won awards for his political ineptitude.  They are desperate.

As home prices are falling, and as gas prices have risen to nearly $4 a gallon, Gov. Dayton is preparing to shut down state government for a tax increase that Minnesotans can’t afford — something that candidate Dayton said he wouldn’t do. I guess if I were the DFL, I’d distract, too!

As Michael points out, the GOP accomplished its mission – or close to it.  They raised the budget, without touching anyone’s taxes.  In addition, they passed some historic reforms to government.

What does the DFL minority and our isolated, embattled governor have to show?

Delaying.  Name-calling.

And the Strib is covering for them.

From ABC News This Week with Christiana Amanpour’s interview with Tim Pawlenty:

PAWLENTY: Any doofus can go to Washington DC and maintain the status quo or incrementally change things, for the country the hour is late.”

AMANPOUR: “Define doofus?”

And, with Goddess as my witness, I would not have been able to resist that high, hanging curveball.

Kwama Heaton of Richfield wanted to sign his kids up for basketball camp.  But when he got laid off from his job as a car salesman, due to a lack of used cars (due to Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program and cost cutting for Obamacare), he had to cancel those plans.

Cynthia DelAmitri of Woodbury told her family that their annual trip to visit her parents for a week of camping and fishing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were on ice because the small recruiting company for which she works is cutting staff (they can’t afford the taxes) and she couldn’t afford to take time off; the big national recruiters would eat her lunch.

Rey Jimenez, your grandmother’s oncologist, quietly decided that added onto the state’s confiscatory business tax rates and absurd healthcare mandates, the added income on couples who earn over $135,000 (he and his wife, your grandmother’s internist) was the last straw. He’s moving to Phoenix.

The media doesn’t cover those sorts of stories (and yes, mine are fictional, but only literally).

But let the government suddenly feel not all fat and happy, and “human interest” is the order of the day for the Twin Cities media:

Camille Miller hasn’t signed her daughter up for Girl Scout camp this summer. The state health care analyst from Woodbury is not sure she’ll have the $500 to pay for it.

Wow.

Not sure I ever paid $500 for kids camp…

Jim Ullmer has told his extended family to forget their annual July 4th get-together at Lake Itasca State Park. Ullmer, a state truck inspector from Crystal, is unsure if the campground will be open.

Because everyone knows family get togethers in local or national parks, or private camp areas, just aren’t the same.  There’s something about that patina of “state ownership” that brings people together, right?

They are just two of more than 54,000 state workers bracing for an uncertain summer as the Capitol budget impasse threatens to shut down government services on July 1.

To which the roughly two million of us in the private sector say “welcome to every day in our world, government worker”.

And half of us add “so quit electing obstructionist DFL governors”.  The GOP submitted a budget – one that’d keep government running, increase most spending that “needs” it and demand some new efficiencies.

Look for the same cavalcade of woe to accelerate; the Strib seems to be even more in the bag for the DFL this year than they did in 2005.

“Progressives” – or at least, way too many of them – hate the free and open interchange of ideas.

Over on this thread at MinnPost on the cancellation of “Sons of Liberty” on AM1280, a commenter sniffed “Freedom of speech has been stretched to the limit by “Patriot” radio”.  And I’d love to ask – what are the “limits” of free speech?   (And, by the way – for all of you who got the vapors over Brad Dean’s radio show or prayer in the house – are you OK with lefty host Randi Rhodes repeatedly calling for then-President Bush’s murder?  Or with Ed Schultz calling his talk-radio better Laura Ingraham a “slut”?  Just curious).

To many progressives, apparently, the limit is “whatever challenges what I believe“; students at Georgetown turned out to sign a (staged) petition to censor conservative websites:

“The undersigned hereby adamantly demand that the United States government shut down right wing hate sites. The hate speech propagated by sites like the Drudge Report, Hot Air, Instapundit, Big Government, and others must not be allowed to corrupt our political discourse any longer. These sites are dangerous not only to truth and freedom but also to our society as a whole. BAN THEM NOW!”

This is at Georgetown, mind you – incubator for our nation’s putative future elites.  And it’s not pretty; it might be time to look into getting some new “elites”.

Ed Morrissey – whose site was specifically targeted in the petition – quotes some of the new power generation:

“There has to be some control,” one young woman says. “I mean, freedom of speech is good, but, there is a certain modicum of control — I mean, look at the Tea Party.” Yeah, look at that freedom of assembly and freedom of political speech that garnered so much support that Republicans won more new seats in a midterm election than either party had in 72 years. We have to control that kind of thing! I particularly liked the one woman who signed the petition because sites like ours “cause a lot of debate.” Oh, heavens, no! Not debate! Why, then one might have to actually pay attention and think for one’s self!

Most common reaction to the question, “What do you think of the First Amendment?” was “I think it’s great, but ….” Maybe Georgetown should consider remedial Civics and American History classes.

I’d say Georgetown, and much of the public education bureaucracy, is thinking “Mission Accomplished” right about now.

It’s nothing new, of course.  Back in 1986, on my old graveyard-shift show on KSTP, I interviewed some members of “Women Against Military Madness” after their leader, Polly Mann, called for censorship of media that didn’t promote the “peace at any price” line.  With a straight face.

Next time someone tells you National Public Radio does a good job of being balanced and avoiding bias, give ’em this example from yesterday afternoon’s “All Things Considered”.  Robert Siegel was interviewin Nina “Jesse Helms Should Die Of AIDS” Totenberg about a new Arizona law that allows courts to shut down businesses that hire illegals.

Siegel asked if it was the same as last year’s controversial immigration law (emphasis):

“No. That law…requires law enforcement personnel to check up on the status of any individual they think on the street is illegally in the country and it says, you know, give me your papers…”

She’s lying, of course, or at least leaving out the bit about “illegals who have some legal contact with law enforcement”, as opposed to trawling the Home Depots looking for people with brown skin.

(SCENE:  Liam Branbert and his wife Slainte, midly disheveled, under the covers, smoking cigarettes).

LIAM: “So did the earth move for you?”

SLAINTE: “Sure, a little”.

LIAM: “But did it move in a progressive way, or kind of a conservative way?”

SLAINTE: “Um – I dunno?  Why?”

LIAM: IT’S IMPORTANT, DAMMIT!”

(And scene).

——————–

Absurd?

Well, on the left, nothing is too absurd.

Which brings us to Brian Lambert’s little poison-pen blog post about Scott Johnson’s observance of Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday.

Other than the melodies, I always wonder how conservative ideologues (ir)rationalize the work of people like Bob Dylan? (Likewise, T-Paw claiming to be a big Springsteen fan.)

Serious?

For starters, because a great piece of art – I’m talking everything from Bach to Darkness on the Edge of Town – connects with people on a way that is much, much deeper than politics.  Although with some on the left, maybe nothing goes deeper than politics.

But I digress.   Scott, my friend and former NARN co-host, is as articulate a music critic as there is:

“In his outstanding City Journal essay on Pete Seeger (“America’s most successful Communist”), Howard Husock placed Dylan in the line of folk agitprop in which Seeger took pride of place. Husock’s essay is an important and entertaining piece. Dylan is only a small part of the story Husock has to tell, however, and Husock therefore does not pause long enough over Dylan to observe how quickly Dylan burst the shackles of agitprop, found his voice, and tapped into his own vein of the Cosmic American Music. Looking back on his long career, one can discern his respect for the tradition as well as his ambition to stand at its head. On 1964’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ album, Dylan foreshadowed his break from the folk movement in ‘Restless Farewell,’ the album’s closing song.”

Lambert – for whom Randy Rhodes (the host, not the guitarist) may be the most evocative artist:

By his next birthday I’m guessing Johnson will have transformed Bob into the poet laureate of The Heritage Foundation.

Or – here’s a radical notion, albeit not a Radical one – he’ll enjoy it.

Session ends and, if you believe the the media, the MNGOP spent the entire time sightseeing:

All that and more must now await a special session this summer, as the Republican majority and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton ended an acrimonious five-month session with very little business done and a $5 billion projected shortfall mostly untouched.

There’s no sign more time in St. Paul would spark a deal to avoid a bruising government shutdown. A long season of legislating only hardened and widened the deep, bitter divide between Dayton and the new legislative leadership.

Read: The Governor used the only tactic he has: stalling, and counting on the media to shape public opinion for him.

Expect a “Minnesota Poll” showing Minnesotans favor “compromise” 60-40, with a 3:2 oversample of DFLers.

And probably a “Humphrey Institute” poll showing it’s more like eleventy-teen to one.

Here you go, Star Tribune and KARE11 and Esme Murphy; it’s your moment to shine.

If you follow the “logic” behind Andy Birkey’s piece (and like all lefty memes, it came from Birkey’s superiors; Phyllis Kahn was mumbling the same sort of tripe a few weeks ago), that…:

If you have even been divorced – in other words, if some part of your life or paper trail is inconsistent with the position, Then you have no business debating what “marriage” is…

…then consistency more or less demands you apply that same logic throughout.

Don’t look at me.  It’s Phyllis Kahn and Andy Birkey’s idea.

As I’ve pointed out on this blog in the past, I’m a former liberal.  But for the grace of God and Doctor Blake, I could still be one today.

But I also had a thing for getting the story right, even when I was a liberal. So I could see how, in an alternate world where common sense never intervened, I might be working as an editor for Twin Cities Ministry Of Independent Media (MiniIndiMed), the centralized editorial control center for all Twin Cities “alternative” media (I did say it was an alternate world, right?) where I”d be collecting a Soros paycheck (alternate worlds by their nature share some traits with our world) to take my red editorial pencil to the output of the Twin Cities’ “alternative” media community.

With that in mind, I thought I’d take a swerve through a “What If”; if I had stayed liberal, and gotten that job with MiniIndiMed.   Here might be my series of revisions – a “red pen”, which will be represented here with red type – to  this Jeff Rosenberg piece on MnPublius:

I’ve been appalled by the MNGOP’s absolute refusal to compromise. They have insisted that they either get every single thing they want or they will shut down our government. It’s an outrage.   [Jeff – I know “victorian vapours” is your gig, but they are doing what they were sent to office,with a resounding mandate, to do.  Feigned outrage looks a little comical after a while – Ed.]

I’m even more outraged, though, when I think of exactly what it is they’re fighting for. I said they insist on getting everything they want. But exactly is that? Here are a few of their top priorities:

Over 100,000 Minnesotans thrown off health care  [Jeff, your link provides no source for this claim.  And when the undecided reader (you have some of those, right?) learns that what the GOP is really doing is transitioning able-bodied, single people off of benefits, and means-testing more, it might tend to undercut your narrative.  Please check into this – Ed.]

Massive cuts to higher education  [More of the same here, Jeff; the “cuts” can be entirely made up by rolling administrative costs back to levels of a couple years ago; and just between and me, you know how much professorial deadwood there is a the U. Please check – Ed.]

A $1.4 billion property tax increase [Jeff, I keep telling you this; eventually, a Republican blogger is going to ask you to show us the bill where the property taxes were increased.  You know it’s absurd, of course – city councils and county commissions do that! – Ed.]

30,000 lost jobs [Jeff, you’re giving me a headache now.  This a number, very likely a random one – something someone at the DFL down on Plato pulled out of their ass to use as a chanting point.  Go ahead and use the number – but know that if you do, people will think MNPublius is some sort of DFL press-release site or something.  You wouldn’t want that, would you?  Of course not! – Ed.]

It’s bad enough that the Republicans are so arrogant they don’t believe they need to compromise. But look at their agenda — look what they’re fighting for. These are absolute disasters for our state. Responsible policymakers would be working hard to protect us from the worst of these cuts. The Republicans, though, are actually fighting for them. [This, on the other hand, is good stuff.  The victorian vapors play well with our base – Ed.]

Governor Dayton is trying to protect Minnesotans from the worst consequences of our budget deficit, while still making needed cuts. The Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to make sure the pain is as bad as possible. [It’s a good thing we don’t pay you to substantiate claims!  Whew! – Ed.]

Every day, in every way, I thank God I took the path I took.

Although that Soros check would be nice.

Where are those Koch Brothers, anyway/

Robert Espinosa – who, to the best of my knowledge, has never said or done anything that didn’t start with a false pretense – is the voice of today’s DFL.

Go for it, DFL.  Embrace your inner, disingenous, narcissistic, solopsistic, childish id. You’re not fooling anyone.

The poll was as drearily predictable as the annual stadium extortion-fest; notwithstanding last November’s electoral GOP legislative sweep, yet another Star/Tribune “Minnesota Poll” shows that the public is, mirabile dictu, entirely on board with the DFL agenda:

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they favor a blend of higher taxes and service reductions to tackle the state’s $5 billion projected deficit. Just 27 percent said they want state leaders to balance the budget solely through cuts.

The poll comes [with utter predictability – Ed.] as the Republican-led Legislature and the DFL governor head into the final week of a legislative session still dug in on their vastly different approaches to balancing the budget.

Dayton said the results show the public backs his position. Republicans said the results run counter to last fall’s election and what they are hearing from Minnesotans.

Predictable?  Absolutely.  Whether through editorial perfidy or lazy methodology, the Strib/”Minnesota” Poll has a long history of releasing “news” the DFL needs, exactly when it needs it.  Especially when the issue is especially close-fought; the harder-fought the issue, the more absurdly lopsided the  Strib poll, like the “Humphrey Institute” Poll run for many years by the U of M and MPR polls, seem to be.  Right when the DFL needs it.

My theory; the DFL knows full well how the “bandwagon effect” in polling works for manipulating public perception; the Strib serves the DFL, wittingly or not.

And, sure enough, the poll’s methodology was as predictable as the Strib’s smug headline; emphasis is added by me:

Today’s Star Tribune Minnesota Poll findings are based on 565 landline and 241 cellphone interviews conducted May 2-5 with a representative sample of Minnesota adults. Interviews were conducted under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

Results of a poll based on 806 interviews will vary by no more than 4.7 percentage points, plus or minus, from the overall population 95 times out of 100.

The self-identified party affiliation of the random sample is 33 percent Democrat, 23 percent Republican and 37 percent independent. The remaining 7 percent said they were members of another party, no party or declined to answer.

Results for the question about the best approach to solving the budget deficit — primarily through service reductions or through a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts — are based on interviews with 548 of the 806 respondents. The question was reasked in follow-up calls to all respondents because of a problem in the original wording of the question, and 548 of the respondents were reached. Results of a poll based on 548 interviews will vary by no more than 5.7 percentage points, plus or minus, from the overall population 95 times out of 100.

In other words, a group which self-reports its political leaning, whose geographical weighting and mix are unknown (remember the Humphrey Institute’s overweighting of Minneapolis respondents? Which they didn’t bother to report until after the election, even though their actual poll, which indicated a 12 point blowout for Mark Dayton, went out on schedule, right before the election?), and where the “independents” are given no known context, and which gives the DFL a completely unearned 50% head start, shows the public solidly behind Mark Dayton.

Just like it needed to.

I doubt the Twin Cities media will ever admit that the “Minnesota Poll” and the “Humphrey Institute” polls are, intentionally or not, pro-DFL propaganda. But it’s gotten to the point where the evidence doesn’t support any other conclusion.

We’ve know for years that billionaire speculator George Soros was funding “progressive” media.  In addition to direct support of many “progressive” “news” outlets (including the local Minnesota Independent, a news site seemingly entirely dedicated to covering Bradlee Dean and Michele Bachmann), Soros also helped launch and fund “Media Matters For America”, which generates the memes that the leftyblog hive uses up and down its chain of command.

But the mainstream media?

Yep, so it seems:

When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.

Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”

Of course, journalistic “ethical codes” are merely frameworks by which journalists can rationalize bad behavior, so that’s fairly meaningless.

The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal.

And the Pulitzer itself, while perhaps not a Soros joint, also has its slant.

In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.

We’ll be following this as it develops.

It’ll be interesting watching the mainstream media rationalizing this.  Expect lots of…:

• “The front office doesn’t affect the newsroom” (although they ignore that nuance when talking about Fox News…)
• “Oh, yeah? What about the Kocb Brothers?”  (Not sure that the Kochs perfectly legal contributes are to any organizations that are ostensibly “non-partisan” and “free of bias”).

But don’t expect to violate the “Society of Professional Journalists’ “Code of Ethics”” in any way.  Nothing ever does.

Lori Sturdevant demands that we “Just say no to wedge politics” in a piece called, conveniently, “Just say no to wedge politics…”

As six middle-aged, white male Republican legislators — all married in the eyes of Minnesota law — left the briefing room Tuesday after announcing their push for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, they couldn’t avoid passing DFL Sen. Scott Dibble on his way inside.

…bv invoking a really, really stupid wedge.

(Dibble is, by the way, middle-aged and very, very white.  He happens to be gay).

How does one look a colleague in the eye or speak a civil greeting, right after announcing an intention to make that colleague’s marriage forever illegitimate?

I craned my neck to see what expressions passed between them. Darn. Too far from the door to get a good look.

“They nodded,” Dibble, a three-termer from Minneapolis and currently the Senate’s only openly gay member, reported afterward. “One or two might have said ‘Hi.’ … That’s what makes it all the more odd that they are willing to effectively dehumanize me.”

We’ll come back to this in another post later today.

But hey, Lori  – good job avoiding those wedges.

Let’s be clear on this – the only reason the DFL (as opposed to gay activists, like Dibble) care about this is that when the vote comes for the amendment, the DFL is going to lose.  Maybe lose big.  As I pointed out during the election, there’s polling out there that suggests that Minnesotans strongly oppose changing the traditional definition of marriage.

If it were otherwise – if there had been any indication that Minnesotans craved single-sex marriage – the DFL would have introduced an amendment legalizing it in 2007, when they took complete control of the legislature, or in 2009, when their control became utterly stifling.  Even had Pawlenty vetoed it, they’d have gotten GOP votes on the issue made public, and hammered them on it in the ’08 and ’10 elections.  If there were a majority of Minnesotans who favored gay marriage.

But there is not.

And so the DFL is desperate to avoid being forced to put votes on the line on this issue.  Because they know that, along with the Cornish “Stand Your Ground” Bill and Voter ID, most Minnesotans, especially outstate, Gay Marriage is a loser for them – and since the DFL’s only hope is to expand outstate (they can hardly control the Twin Cities and Duluth and the Arrowhead more thoroughly than they do), this is not part of the plan.

More on Gay Marriage itself later today.

Heather Martens – formerly of “Citizens for A “Safer” Supine Minnesota”, now with some other astroturf group that is, most likely, a re-branding of CSM, wrote a “Commentary” on Minnesota Public Radio today in re Rep. Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill (HF 1467).

Here’s the “Commentary“.

Here’s the bill.

I’ll have a piece out on it tomorrow.  Actually, I’ve found 15 serious outright lies – as in, statements that are 180 degrees divergent from reality – and 2-3 major logical fallacies so far.  So much, in fact, that I may break the piece up into, well, 15-18 pieces, running every half hour all day tomorrow.

The piece is that bad.

And there is just no way I should have all that fun by myself.

So I’m going to do something I haven’t done in years; I’m going to sound the horn.

Bloggers, Tweeter and Facebookers; it’s time for a good old-fashioned feeding frenzy; a Blog Swarm on Martens.  And on MPR for printing a “commentary” that can’t pass even the most rudimentary fact-checking, as part of what is seeming more and more like an editorial position to start pushing for more gun control.

If you write a piece – a blog post, Facebook update or Tweet – about Martens and MPR, leave a note in the comment section.  I’ll post a “Carnival of Truth” tomorrow recapping everyone’s efforts.

Andy Post at MDE  points us to a tweet yesterday from a DFL staffer for St. Paul DFL Senator Dick Cohen:

Dumb remark by the overly-entitled child of boundless political privilege?  In and of itself, sure.  And, as such, more or less forgettable.

Post, however, wonders if the DFLers will show the same outrage as they did when a GOP Senator’s assistant sent an imprudent – dumb, really – email over the winter.  Kim Kelley, a legislative assistant to Senator Scott Newman, told the Minnesota Nurse’s Association that the Senator would not meet with their rep, since the Nurse’s Association had donated to Newman’s opponent’s campaign.

He linked to “Sally Jo Sorenson” of Bluestem Prairie.  Sorenson, always on the lookout for affronts to DFL integrity, amended a post she wrote last January in which she wrote about the flap in January:

Here’s the intact email, since the Kelley email no longer works:

From: kim.kelley@senate.mn [mailto:kim.kelley@senate.mn]
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 2:00 PM
To: Eileen Gavin
Subject: [Eileen Gavin] Meeting

Hi Eileen-

Unfortunately, Senator Newman will not see any organizations that donated to/supported his opponent Hal Kimball. After some careful checking, I discovered that the MNA had donated to Kimball’s campaign. Your association will be unable to schedule an appointment with Senator Newman.

Kim Kelley

Legislative Assistant

Sorenson rejects the idea that there’s any moral equivalence between a bobbleheaded LA’s caustic, sneering contempt for Christians, and another bobblehead bringing a hint of retributive spite into getting access to a Senator.

And guess what – she’s right!

They are two separate, equally noxious issues.

Kelley let slip the worst-kept secret in politics; donations buy you access, and pissing off politicians loses it.  The Minnesota Nurses Association is no more welcome with Scott Newman than the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance is with, say, Tom Bakk.  Oh, it’s good politics to meet with, and especially to be seen meeting with, ones’ opponents (and Sorensen does note that Newman did actually meet with the MNA after all), but let’s not kid ourselves; there’s a reason special interests pony up for campaigns.  (And the more politicians try to “reform” it, rather than illuminate it, the worse it gets).

Don’t kid yourself; if a young evangelical Republican tweeted a dumb jape about Eid, or Passover, or…well, any non-Christian observance, really, the long knives would certainly come out.  But Kaplan?  Well, she’s what you get from young “progressives” who’ve come up through an academic and political system that teaches smug, giggly, entitled intolerance.  And stop the presses – a  Jewish (presumably – I mean, it’s not a stretch to think Kaplan is at least ethnically Jewish, but given my family name, I’m not insensitive to the possibility it’s not) 20-something hipster is bagging on Christians.

It’s pretty piddly, really.  But so is most petty intolerance.