I’d like to thank Hugh Hewitt and Duane Patterson for inviting me on the Hewitt Show at the Fair this evening.

For those of you who might be new to the blog, here are some of the stories I referred to when talking with Hugh:

• Here’s my takedown of a half-witted Star Tribune hit piece on Tom Emmer.
• Here’s my piece on the funding behind the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” (ABM), which is funded mostly by Dayton’s family and ex-wife (a Rockefeller), and has been running the ongoing smear campaign against GOP Gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.
• I called ABM’s campaign against Target Corporation “astroturf”. I meant it.
• ABM’s got the local business media in on it, too; they were reporting that Target Corp – which donated $150,000 to a PAC that endorsed Emmer – was suffering financially due to the donation because of the backlash by pro-gay and illegal-immigration groups.  I showed it was not so.  And when a group of “socially responsible investment” firms tried to bully Target into complianece, I showed they were mice heckling lions, financially speaking, and also that their performance wasn’t nearly as good as that of…Target.
• Just how big a bunch of liars are ABM?  Not only did I notice it, but Factcheck.org basically said everything ABM has ever said is a lie.

Thanks for stopping by, Hugh fans!

Getting ready to go on the Rob Port show on AM1100 The Flag in Fargo.  Tune in!

UPDATE:  Talked about the Tracker story, and the rumors about Mike Hatch’s interest in the gubernatorial race.

UPDATE 2:  Here’s the audio:

The problem:  polling shows that Independence Ventura party candidate Tom Horner draws fifty percent more DFLers than Republicans, despite a months-long campaign to portray him as “the other Republican” to try to suck votes away from Tom Emmer.

You know the DFL is concerned.  Because Lori Sturdevant is on the case:

The Minnesota governor’s contest has two probusiness contenders — Republican Tom Emmer and the Independence Party’s Tom Horner.

That was the unanimous judgment of five Minnesota Chamber of Commerce audience members who lingered after last Tuesday’s three-way gubernatorial candidates’ debate to talk about what they’d heard.

The “unanimous” judgment; despite the fact that he wants to jack up sales taxes and a variety of other government excises, Horner is just dreamy.

Imagine that.

Oh, yeah:

The Republican candidate is singing the same smaller-government, lower-taxes tune that business lobbyists have been humming for years at the Capitol (though Emmer never seems to get past the chorus to any lyrics describing how he would downsize).

There are two and a half months go to, Lori.  I suspect he’ll squeeze it in there.

It’s not often that I praise the Twin Cities’ mainstream media.  Especially the two dailies, whom I would not trust to cover Republican electoral campaigns fairly and honestly (as institutions, not necessarily in terms of each and every reporter) if offered them a billion dollars.

But when they’re right – when they actual do the gumshoe reporting on issues that their institutional biases allow them to be fair and honest about – sometimes they truly do God’s work.

As in the Koua Fong Lee case, as recapped by columnist Ruben Rosario (via  Bob Johnson’s ADemocracy).

Rosario:

Justice prevails, no thanks to ineffective defense counsel and obstinate county prosecutors.

A defense attorney’s mission is to advocate as best he or she can for the client. A prosecutor’s ultimate mission is to seek justice. Both failed miserably in this sad case.

Lee was the driver of a Toyota involved in a horrendous crash in the summer of 2006, in Saint Paul.  I remember driving by the crash scene, on Snelling at I94, as I ran errands that evening; it was one of the worst accident scenes I’ve ever seen.

In hindsight, the first big mistake was to prosecute this case as a felony…there was no evidence at all that this man, returning from church services with his pregnant wife and their 4-year-old daughter, intended to crash at high speed into another vehicle. He was not drunk or high or text-messaging or dozing off or otherwise distracted.

Yet, for argument’s sake, even if we grant that he wrongly stepped on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake, it is still not a felony. No matter. He was charged with multiple counts of criminal vehicular homicide, gross negligence. He was prosecuted and convicted as a criminal and sentenced to an eight-year state prison term.

The problem, as Rosario – recapping a story that was covered in Pulitzer-worthy depth (and by that I mean Pulitzers as they once were, rather than as they are today) by PiPress reporter Jackie Gurnon – was the lawyers; Lee’s “defense” attorney…:

That conviction was secured in no small part with the head-scratching support of a defense lawyer who contradicted his client’s testimony that he stepped and kept his foot on the brake right through the fatal impact.

In fact, this lawyer embraced a key prosecution witness’s gas-pedal theory during closing arguments and never aggressively pursued alternative theories that may have supported what his client was saying about what happened. Who needs prosecutors with a lawyer like that?

…and, most chillingly, the Ramsey County Attorney’s office; even as reports of unintended uncontrollable accellerations in Toyotas multiplied:

…Gaertner and her office not only opposed a new trial, but also brought in “experts” who pooh-poohed new findings that seemed quite obvious. One of the most glaring prosecutorial missteps in all of this was pushing the theory that Lee did not step on the brake because there was a lack of long skid marks at the accident scene.

Of course, the new evidence underlined that Lee’s car had anti-lock brakes, which don’t leave skid marks when applied.

That’s something that should have easily been checked, regardless of the subsequent Toyota recall. But neither the defense nor the prosecution bothered to check this most momentous fact during the trial.

Read the whole thing – and no, I haven’t excerpted anywhere near the whole fascinating story.

It’s good to know there are still reporters that can still do some good in this world.

It’s chilling to realize that Susan Gaertner – the Ramco attorney – has higher political aspirations.

While in the Rob Port show on AM1100 The Flag in Fargo,  We discussed the Freedom Foundation’s story about Minnesota cities and counties’ lobbying budgets, as well as the Strib’s non-story story about Target’s “nervous investors”.

There’s going to be a public hearing on “saving the Internet” tonight.  It’ll be at the auditorium at South High (3131 19th Avenue South in Minneapolis).

No, that’s really what they’re calling it; here’s the email:

From: Josh Silver, FreePress.net [mailto:info@freepress.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 11:01 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: Why you should join me and Al Franken on Thursday

Dear Friend,

I know you’re busy, but I can’t tell you how important it is that you join me and Sen. Al Franken [tonight]at South High School in Minneapolis (yes, Sen. Franken is coming!)

My warnings are no longer speculation. Google, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are about to turn the Internet into cable TV — where their favored websites and content will move fast, and everyone else will be left without a voice. It’s time for all of us to stand up or get rolled.

President Obama has said that protecting the open Internet was a top priority. But the FCC chairman remains silent. And too many in Congress have been bought by the phone and cable companies.

Our last line of defense is you. We need more than 400 people to show up on Thursday night. If we don’t tell Sen. Franken and Commissioners Copps and Clyburn (both will be there) that people like you are outraged about a corporate takeover of the Internet, we will lose. It’s that simple.

Please come with a friend or two to South High School Thursday night. The event begins at 6 p.m. You can go here to RSVP and learn more.

If you have something to say, we’ll make certain you have time at the microphone. We need to hear you. The commissioners need to hear you.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Josh Silver

President & CEO

Free Press

www.freepress.net

www.SavetheInternet.com

P.S. For more on Thursday’s hearing, read today’s great MinnPost editorial by our allies at the Center for Media Justice and New America Foundation.

Wow.  That sounds important.

Rumors are bopping around that Secretary of State Ritchie is also  going to attend, although there’s some back-and-forth over whether the Senator Franken is supposed to be in town or not.  The group putting on the event, “Free Press“, would seem to need some star power to draw people and attention to the event; last night’s Meet Emmer” event drew more people than either of the two previous attempts.

Negligible as this event seems, though, it’s important for conservatives to try to turn out (I have a prior engagement, unfortunately).  Copps and Clyburn are both activists on the FCC, who are completely on board with Obama’s push to create a kinder, gentler, tamer (for Democrats) media landscape.

“Oh, you’re just being paranoid, Berg”.

Not if you dig into the pedigree of “Free Press”.  Behind the innocuous name is an organization with big, intrusive plans for even more “hope and change” in American society.  Their board is a who’s who of behind-the-scenes media utopians – Josh Silver, Robert McChesney, people from The Nation and the Norman Lear Foundation.

And their track record?

They don’t like capitalism or the free market very much:

“There is no real answer [to the U.S. economic crisis] but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.” (Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster, “A New New Deal under Obama?,” Monthly Review, 2/2009)

But that doesn’t mean that “Free Press” is about nationalizing the Internet, does it?

Josh Silver on the case for nationalizing the internet:

“The agency needs to shut out the noise machine and do what it must to fulfill its mandate to ‘serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.’ Any other course would be disastrous…. The United States is falling further behind our global competitors in high-speed Internet adoption, speed and price. The birthplace of the Internet now ranks at No. 22 globally in broadband speed and access, in part because the government lets the phone and cable companies dictate telecommunications policy.” (Josh Silver, “Viewpoints: Broadband rules are crucial to expand access and protect users,” Sacramento Bee, 7/18/10)

Ben Scott on the same subject:’

“Increasingly the Internet is no longer a commercial service, its an infrastructure…What we’re witnessing at the FCC now is the logical next step which is we are going to create a regulatory framework for the Internet which recognizes it is an infrastructure now and not a commercial service.” (Ben Scott, C-SPAN: The Communicators, , 9/25/09)

“Infrastructure”.  Like the Interstate system.  Or public toilets.

No, really:

“We have to stop thinking of media as a business pure and simple…The way we should understand journalism is as a public good.” (Robert McChesney, “Journalism should be subsidized by government, professor says,” 2/2/10)

I mean, it’s not that they mind free speech.  Just the right kind of free speech.  McChesney:

“To the extent commercial activities are given First Amendment protection, it makes the rule of capital increasingly off-limits to political debate and government regulation…In my view, progressives need to stake out a democratic interpretation of the First Amendment and do direct battle with the Orwellian implications of the ACLU’s commercialized First Amendment.” (Robert McChesney, “The New Theology of the First Amendment,” Monthly Review, 3/1998)

In fact, “Free Speech’s” McChesney wants the government to pay for more of the right kind of speech:

“When you look at our founders, they did not only condone government subsidies of journalism, they demanded it.” (Robert McChesney, “Journalism should be subsidized by government, professor says,” 2/2/10)

No, not being paranoid:  the government.  With taxpayer dollars!:

$200 Tax Credit Proposal for Newspapers in Free Press Report: “McChesney and Nichols have drawn from this proposal to advocate that taxpayers receive $200 in annual tax credits to spend on daily newspapers, as long as the newspapers publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial news hole of at least 24 broad pages each day with less than 50 percent advertising.148 Another proposal would allow people to write off their subscriptions to newspapers and magazines as a tax deduction, as they do with their college tuition.” (Victor Pickard, Josh Stearns and Craig Aaron, “Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy,” Free Press, p. 36)

Because “the market” is allowing dissenting opinions waaaaay too much sway:

“The ultimate irony of Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh is that they couch in populist rhetoric a message that, in its very essence, is anti-populist – designed to protect the swindle at the core of our media system’s failure. And that is why the media’s old guard is targeting the idea that this system needs to change.” (Tim Karr, “What Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh are really afraid of,” Huffington Post,9/16/09)

…and those dissenters have not only scary opinions, but sometimes (says Josh Silver) disrupt the chosen and preferred narrative!:

“Fox News continues to amaze us and propagandize many, labeling as fringe-left anyone who disagrees with the president, takes issue with tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, says that Iraq is a quagmire, or dares to declare that all Americans deserve a living wage and guaranteed health care. The narrow, corporate-driven rhetoric that passes as reasonable political debate on Fox and most of the mainstream American media has become a laughing stock – if only to keep us from crying.” (Josh Silver, “The decline of US media: Fox News leads race to the bottom,” Huffington Post,  2/22/07)

And those “right wing” peasants must be suppressed!  For the good of The People!

“No wonder our political system can’t solve big problems. Ruthless opposition and dingbat delusions are the currency of right-wing success, and sand in the gears of democracy. Whether they’re cynical postures or sincere beliefs doesn’t matter. The grand national conversation that was intended to enable citizens and their representatives to find common ground for conflicting values has become a grand national midway of carny-barkers and rodeo clowns.” (Marty Kaplan, former Air America rodeo clown, “How would the Right know it’s wrong?” Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Huffington Post,10/5/09)

Because to McChesney, it all ties together:

“…any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.” (Robert McChesney, “The U.S. Media Reform Movement,” Monthly Review,, 9/2008)

And when I say “ties together”, I mean “to his real, larger goal“:

“Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism..” (Robert W. McChesney, “Journalism, Democracy…and Class Struggle,” Monthly Review, 11/2000).

So this is who we’re dealing with.

These are their goals.

These are the people that Al Franken and Mark Ritchie, apparently, are going to be shilling for tonight.

And I honestly wish I could attend.  And if someone does – if one of you liveblogs or streams it – let me know.  I’ll link it and push it in any way I can.

Lori Sturdevant is doing her most important job; trying to spin the DFL’s sows’ ears into silk purposes to buffalo the thin film of metro liberals and outstate oldsters who still believe the media into thinking they’re looking at a silk purse.

Here’s the sow’s ear:  the DFL’s endorsed candidate is a superannuated playboy hobby politician who’s been buying elections for his collection for thirty years.  His name’s been in peoples’ living rooms – first as a news story (most expensive campaign in Minnesota history), then as a punchline (running like a scared kitten in 2005, leaving 534 other legislators to face the terrorists alone).  He just ignored the DFL endorsement, wasted millions of DFL dollars in a fruitless primary, and once again proved the impotence of the DFL endorsement for state office – based purely on his campaign budget and his appeal to outstate oldsters who remember, or mistake him for, his father. Or grandfather.

Behold: Silk Purse!

THE ECONOMY’S BEEN AWFUL for too long. Voters are looking for familiarity and a message of hope. Along comes a candidate for governor who fills that bill, even though he stands apart from his party, and who has special appeal in northern Minnesota.

Sow’s ear: Dayton is to the DFL what Bob Dole was to the national GOP in 1996.

Silk purse:

Is it 1982 all over again?

Sow’s ear:  There are parallels with 1982, that dim and dismal time in Minnesota history:

Mark Dayton’s narrow DFL primary victory Tuesday was reminiscent of the late Gov. Rudy Perpich’s comeback 28 years ago. Then, Perpich benefited from a well-known name, a title that assured attention — “former Gov.” — and the loyalty of his fellow Iron Rangers. He bested Warren Spannaus, who as a former party chair and attorney general had the DFL machine on his side, much as House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher did this year.

The parallels between Dayton’s campaign to date and Perpich’s are numerous enough to raise suspicion that the “former U.S. Sen.” is consciously following Rudy’s 1982 playbook…Like Perpich, Dayton skirted the DFL establishment without alienating it. Like Perpich, Dayton emphasizes quality public education as the best ticket to a better economy. And like Perpich, Dayton is a quirky but genuine guy whom people easily underestimate.

Silk Purse:  There is none.

Well, not if you’re a DFLer.  For the rest of us, Speed Gibson works Sturdevant over like Mike Tyson punching out Santino from Project Runway.

Mark Dayton is “Perpichean” she says, even though the Perpich was no ultra-liberal. She’d know that if she’d bothered to read the unsigned lead Editorial on the next page.

Dayton is asking for Minnesota to again make its top personal income tax rate one of the highest in the country. That’s where it ranked 25 years ago — when a DFL governor, Rudy Perpich, pushed hard for its reduction to improve business competitiveness.

As the senior DFL mouthpiece at the Star Tribune, Sturdevant is of course overlooking the biggest similarity between Perpich and Dayton: erratic, inexplicable behavior. Perpich, you may remember, fancied himself a Presidential contender, doing goofy things like dying his hair jet black and changing “Rudy” to “Rudoloph G” Perphich. Dayton’s issues you likely know already, but that’s just “quirky” according to Sturdevant.

And by the way, Dayton does not really emphasize quality education, just more money. Perpich was a true education reformer (Charter Schools, e.g.), and did in fact improve the quality of education for those able to access those options.

When will the Strib cop to the fact that Lori Sturdevant is nothing but a full-time DFL flak in journalists’ clothes?

In the wake of “Journolist”, it’s easy to see collusion everywhere.

It’s hard to tell, sometimes, if it’s because the lefty media and “alternative” media are completely in collusion, or if they all basically repeat each others’ stories.  Or both.

Last week, we shredded the thin gruel of “Minnesota Observer”‘s piece claiming that Salem Radio Twin Cities owed “equal time” to King Banaian’s opponent in House District 15B.

And even though I pretty much shredded the point, apparently regional lefties haven’t gotten the memo.  James Kessler, a peripatetic anti-conservative letter-to-the-editorialist, writes the Saint Cloud Times:

According to section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934, which says, and I quote, “If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station.”

What it means is that if, for example, a candidate has several hours of air time every week on a radio station, then that radio station must give that candidate’s opponents equal air time every week. So perhaps King Banaian or KYCR-AM 1570 would care to explain how exactly Banaian is able to keep his broadcast on that radio station without that station providing equal opportunities for Banaian’s opponent?

If you read Shot In The Dark, you know that the law applies to radio stations that are heard in the district.  KYCR – King’s station – is not heard in 15B.

After all, Banaian is running for the District 15B seat in the Legislature. That station gives him four hours every week. Are they also giving his opponents the same amount of air time every week?

And it’s not like his careful refusal to mention his own candidacy on that radio show means he is falling within the law. That he is a candidate for political office and that he has a radio show is enough to require that KYCR give his opponent equal air time.

As we discussed last week: KYCR is heard barely, if at all, in District 15B. Ms. Lewis would need to drive to Eagan – 90 minutes each way, plus two hours on the air, plus prep time – on Saturdays during prime campaign time, to do a show that would not be heard at all in the district at hand.

Perhaps Janet Lewis – the DFLer who won the primary last week to run against King – should tell the leftyblog community to quit trying to do her favors.

Luke Hellier at MDE notes that  Time Magazine seems to have scrubbed its’ 2006 “The Blunderer” story, in which they declared Mark Dayton one of the five worst Senators in the US:

In 2006, Mark Dayton was named one of America’s Worst Senators by Time Magazine.  The story was featured in the magazine and online.

But now, the story can’t be found any where.  The story can’t be found on Time.com and can’t even be found on Lexis Nexis.

One has to wonder if Time Magazine decided to pull down the article to prevent more people from reading the story.

I found a copy on an internet archive site that was linked from Dayton’s Wikipedia page.

It doesn’t seem to be available on Google anymore; about a month ago when I wrote about the story, it was top front and center.

Yet another chapter in the media’s shameful record of being in the bag for the liberal canddiate in a local election?

(more…)

Last winter, there was a leftyblogger conference in downtown Saint Paul.

Someone must have run a session on how to play investigative reporter. “Minnesota Observer”, writing at “Cucking Stool”, thinks she’s onto something.

Let’s read the story…

D’oh.  Not that link  It’s a dead link.  Because MNob had to pull the story down and retool it just a tad.

But retool she did – and it finally ended up at this link…I think.

Yes!  It’s there!

Spot [leftybloggers have trouble using their real names]  has often jousted with St. Cloud State University professor of the dismal science King Banaian over matters of economic policy here at the Cucking Stool.

Spot “jousts” with King in the same way the Washington Generals “joust” with the Globetrotters.  But I digress.

What I want to talk about today is something a bit different, and a bit more personal to the professor: the Communications Act of 1934. Specifically section 315 of the Act and its equal opportunity requirement on a broadcaster, say a radio station. The Act requires that

If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station

I remember having to learn this bit of law ,when I first started in radio (um, 31 years ago this month); it means that radio and TV stations have an obligation to provide the same access to the air to candidates from all parties.

Of course, not every candidate;  otherwise, stations would be so busy broadcasting screeds from the Grass Roots party and the Natural Law party that they’d sound like AM950, and have the ratings to match.  No, candidates have to be officially-endorsed candidates that are legally on the ballot.  Which means they’ve been endorsed and the convention or, if there’ a primary, the election winner.

The equal opportunity requirements contained in section 315 of the Act have been described as “the closest thing in broadcast content regulation to the ‘golden rule.'”

In the same way that I’ve been described as “Original Gangsta”.

The law – or at least the Cliff Notes version of it – aside, MNob cuts to what passes for the chase:

Professor Banaian is running for the Minnesota legislature, seeking to serve the people of House District 15B…He has a website up, he’s on Facebook and the Twitter. He’s pretty obviously a “legally qualified candidate” these days under the Act.

And, as MNob noted (it was apparently why she took down the original post) the DFL doesn’t have a legal candidate yet; they’re duking it out in the primary tomorrow.  King will take the winner on in November (and, I suspect, win by 5-10 points).

But he also has a media presence that his opponents do not, one that brings us back to section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934. You see, he also has four hours of air time every single week in the form of the “King Banaian Show” on 1570 AM, some “Business Talk Radio” station here in the Twin Cities…

Remember that phrase – “here in the Twin Cities”.

Candidate Banaian has had hours of air time at his disposal. I don’t see that anyone else in the race appearing on the KYCR schedule.

Well, no.  Economist Banaian has had the hours “at his disposal” to do a show about economics.  And it is “in the Twin Cities”; not in Saint Cloud, part of which is in 15B.

But MNob is – to a point – correct; he’s a candidate.

On his candidacy website, Facebook, and Twitter he makes no mention of his radio show, and the radio show’s website doesn’t mention his candidacy, which makes me think he knows that all is not entirely according to Hoyle in this scenario.

Not sure how MNob’s crack research skills missed the fact we’ve been plugging King’s show every week for ten months now; King’s been on the air on one Salem Twin Cities station or another for six and a half years, now.  I’m not a lawyer, so I’m obviously not mentally equipped to ponder the workings of the law-school-trained mind, but if “according to Hoyle” means “publicized”, King’s pretty much got it covered.

I’m not completely detached from the discussion; I was there for part of it.  When Salem Communications switched King’s program from AM1280 to AM1570, to give it one of the most solid, credible local voices in the market for discussing business and economic  issues, everyone knew that there was a possibility that King would run for office.  The question went up the corporate food chain and came back down positive.  King could do his show, but he couldn’t talk about being a candidate; his focus was the same as the station’s; business, not politics.

Still, MNob’s right, so far – since King is a candidate…

…under the law, his care in avoiding discussions of his candidacy doesn’t won’t matter. Most likely, once he received a party unit’s endorsement and certainly once he filed his paperwork, his presence on the air triggered the equal opportunity provisions of the law.

Well, sure, once the Democrats endorse an opponent.

Or it would; if KYCR were heard under any normal, reasonable circumstances, in House District 15B.

Here’s HD15B (warning: PDF file!): it’s eastern Saint Cloud and its southeast environs in Stearns county.

Here’s KYCR’s listening area:

The red circle is the “Local Coverage” pattern – the area where the station can be reliably picked up. it ends a good half a county short of the nearest tip of District 15B.  The lavender line is the “Distant Coverage” pattern – where the signal catches a bare corner of 15B, but only if you’re pretty darn motivated and have a good radio or a big antenna.  The blue line is the “fringe coverage area”, where you have to be more or less lucky to be able to find the station even if you want to try really hard (and I’m here to testify – it’s real hard to get a station in the fringe area, and harder still to get a meaningful signal).

As you can see, over 90% of the district is in the “Fringe” overage area (Coverage maps explained).  Experience says even the red circle is optimistic.  Oh, and at night – when half the “equal time” would occur – the range is about 2/3 of what you see on the map above.

I’m not bringing this up for the wonky radio-geek-olicious fun of it; the “Equal Opportunity” rules have limits.  One of those limits, as far as the FCC is concerned, is “does a voter in an area have a reasonable chance of being able to pick up the candidate’s broadcast?”   If a candidate in Fargo has a show on a station in Louisville, Kentucky, the Kentucky station would not likely be forced to give up equal time; nobody in Fargo will ever hear the candidate’s broadcast, so it can’t influence the election even indirectly.

And, according to a source familiar with this situation, that’s why Banaian’s show continues – because it is impossible for anyone in HD15B to hear it under normal circumstances, except via the internet – and the FCC doesn’t require Equal Opportunity on the Internet, because candidates can produce their own webcasts as easily as Salem can.  Probably easier.

So while the Equal Opportunity rule might apply to the race in 15B, it’s a real stretch.

Of course, “stretch” doesn’t mean “impossible”.  So if I were KYCR’s program director (and I am not!), I’d say something like this:

MANAGER MITCH: Sure, Zach Dorholt or Carol Lewis, whichever of you wins the primary!  You want equal time?  You got equal time!  You roust yourself up at 7AM on Saturday, and get on the road by 8:30.  Get yourself from Saint Cloud to Eagan by 10 or 10:30, because you’re going on the air at 11!  You have two hours (the same length as King’s broadcast; we’ll rebroadcast it on Sunday night, just as we do King’s.  Oh, unless you’d rather come down here on Sunday night!).

The law requires us to give you two hours of airtime and a microphone.  I’ll throw in an engineer to run the board for you, naturally.  But making yourself sound good and credible when you’ve probably never done any radio – that’s your job!  So you can sit in that room for two hours – it’s actually 88 minutes after commercials – and try not to sound like a cottonmouthed stammering fool.  Unless, of course, you’d like to have one of the hosts in the building lead you through a discussion of the district’s issues…oh, wait.  All conservatives.  Sorry about that.

And you can do that 88 minutes on the air knowing that not a single person in your district will ever hear what you’re saying, unless they really love tinkering with radios, which, let’s be honest, on a summer Saturday in Minnesota, nobody does.

(D’oh, sorry – you might be dimly audible in the southeasternmost tip of the district – the Republican part.  Time well spent, folks!)

You’ll be off the air at 1PM, which leaves you back in St. Cloud by about 2:30, if there’s no construction.

So you go ahead and tell your campaign manager “Hey, I’d like to take six hours of prime Saturday campaigning time to drive to Eagan to do a broadcast that absolutely nobody in our district will hear, except maybe a few people who are rock-ribbed Bachmann supporters anyway; nobody from Saint Cloud, the only place we’ll be getting any votes, will be able to hear it even in the unlikely event they’d try”.

And then, you tell that manager you’re going to be doing it every single week until the election is over, or until Banaian decides to take a break from it.

C’mon down!  Mi airtime es su airtime!

Perhaps Mr. Dorholt and Ms. Lewis’ campaign managers might want to be in touch with MNob to ask her to quit doing them favors.

Look – it’s entirely possible that King will put his show on hiatus has the campaign switches to its final push for November, and hand it over to guests hosts or do a few months worth of “best ofs”.   Campaigning is hard, and I’d imagine King could use a few extra hours a week when the end-of-cycle grind really kicks in.  And if he gets elected – and I think he will, and I think the smart money would think so even if King hadn’t been one of Smart Money’s friends for over six years – we’ll have to see what happens, then.

But it’ll have nothing to do with the FCC – for the radical reason that everyone involved in the show at Salem and KYCR thought about all these possibilities well in advance.  Equal Opportunity might apply to the DFL candidates in 15B; they might just be really dumb to try to use it.

But if all you leftybloggers want to get equal time, pass the word to Dave Walz, Keith Ellison and BettyMcCollum that my repeated invites to appear on the Northern Alliance still stand.  Of course, nobody at any of those offices has the manners to respond, much less the seeds to take us up on it (even though RT Rybak found Ed and I perfectly respectful and civil interviewers; McCollum and Ellison apparently need interviewers who’ll paint their toenails on the air for them)…

…possibly because there’s no FCC law that requires them to accept the offer.

Pity.

Just thought I’d kick back and remind you all that after two months spent feverishly debunking the many, many lies of “A Better Minnesota”, and pointing out what the regional mainstream media wouldn’t – that A4aBM is largely a front for Dayton family money – the word is finally getting out.

Last week Pat Kessler basically reached the same conclusions that I did over A4aBM’s funding.

And late last week, Factcheck.org – a production of those conservative tools the Annenberg Foundation – basically agreed that you can tell Alliance for a Better Minnesota is lying when their lips are moving, in an article that excoriates the PAC for its mangling of the truth.

When you want actual facts, who ya gonna call first?

…I’ll be on AM1100 The Flag with Rob Port at 6:35 or so to talk about the Governor’s race.

You can listen in here:
Live video by Ustream

To hear the local left and media – pardon the redundancy – you’d think Target came out advocating killing puppies.  In fact, for the left and media (ptr), it may have been even worse – committing apostasy.

But is the “news”  bad for Emmer, the “MNForward” PAC, or even for Target?

There are a couple of reasons I’m going to suggest “no”.

Dayton’s Already Won The Base: A friend of this blog once suggested to Tom Emmer that he needs to quit trying to win the conservative base.  There may be a point to that.  But this issue – especially the “Emmer is Anti-Gay” slur, about which more below – is the same thing in reverse; it’s the left’s attempt to inflame the lefty base over some of their big code words; “anti-gay” and “corporate money”.  It’s possible that people who haven’t been converted to one side or the other might pay attention to this story – but for a variety of reasons, I think that at the very very worst this story has short legs.

That Sweet Stench of Desperation: But there is a reason to try to get the lefty base all riled up – because they are in the midst of a lethargy that reminds me of Republicans in 2008 or 1996.  The widespread, outside-the-party-meeting passion is all on the right these days.  The DFL knows it – and has do to something to get their base to give a damn, especially given the spectre of having to go out and get people excited about Mark Dayton in less than a week.  And so the left needs to create a boogeyman.

Now granted it’s a purely negative campaign – “Vote for Dayton or…um…there’ll be a conservative in office!”.  But consider the alternative; “Vote for Mark Dayton; he’ll tax people who work hard enough to earn over $250K, and probably the rest of us too.  And then…um…”

And a negative campaign is better than no campaign at all.

Emmer Is Not Anti-Gay: There are probably a thick dollop of DFLers and not-that-smart independents who hear “supports traditional marriage” and think “hates gays”.  But people in the real world, the world of the intelligent, do in fact know that the vast majority of people, regardless of their politics, both accept gays as equals and, judging by the voting on gay-marriage referenda nationwide, do not accept the idea of gay marriage.  It’s a bit of cognitive dissonance; smart people see cynical people saying “that means he’s rabidly anti-gay” to dumb people, and shake their heads in disgust.  And, jokes about “Governor Ventura” aside, most people are smarter than that.

Although perhaps the Emmer campaign needs to send the sound bite from his appearance on the NARN at last year’s State Fair to those who believe A4aBM’s slur:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What do you think about gay marriage?

EMMER:  I don’t care!  [Audience laughs]  No, seriously – I believe marriage is about procreation – but this next election is all about jobs.

I suspect that’s not too far afield from what the vast majority of Minnesotans – regardless of their politics  – believe.

It’s Not A Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay World:  Look – in any population, you’re going to find 1-2% of the people are actively gay, and probably 1-2% of the population who genuinely hate gays.  In between you have the rest of us; people who would fight for a gay person’s right to political and legal equality (to say nothing of their right not to get beaten up), but need to be convinced about gay marriage.  And among that 96% are not a few people who either care enough about politics to ask “er, how is this “anti-gay?”, and not a few more who say “someone hates gays?  Sack up, fellas, I got plenty of people who hate me for being a Korean grocer/white Christian/Lebanese mortgage broker/Armenian professor/Jew.  Life’s tough; have a falafel and join the freakin’ club”.   Either way, playing the victim card only gets you so much traction when times are as tough as they are.

Especially because…:

MNForward Is Right: MNForward’s agenda has nothing, bupkes, to do with social policy.  It’s about trying to make sure we get a responsible government – one whose policies will not actively trash this state’s already dicey business environment.  Jobs are hard to find these days; the last thing we need is to make it harder to create, get and hold (private sector) jobs.

James Carville said it; “it’s the economy, stupid”.  And deep in their conference room down on Plato Boulevard, you just know the DFL has to admit to itself that this is a lousy year to be selling dime-store socialism – but it’s the only card in their hand.  And so they have to draw attention away from it, which leads to…well, see the “Sweet Stench of Desperation” section, above…

I think that when the dust settles on this that, even if the media manages to hush up the genuine discussion about A4aBM’s funding and the speciousness of the “anti-gay” claims, that Tom Emmer and, most likely, Target will both come out ahead.  The whole flap reeks of last-ditch desperation.

And even Minnesota voters don’t get that silly.

Three weeks ago, Shot In The Dark showed you that “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, which has been funding the avalanche of anti-Emmer attack ads, is an astroturf group funded by the Dayton family and their friends, relatives and cronies (60%, give or take) and the unions (around 40%).

Today, Pat Kessler’s “Reality Check” on WCCO does the same.

While we’ve been focusing a lot on the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and their serial lies about Tom Emmer (currently accuracy rate climbing up toward 0%), the other DFL candidates haven’t done a whole lot better in the accuracy department.

Matt Entenza has been running a very dirty campaign…against Tom Emmer.  Not against Mark Dayton or Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, of course, behind whom he’s running a wan third place in the DFL primary race.

But that hasn’t kept him from spending nearly $4 million on ads so far this cycle – more than Tim Pawlenty spent in his entire winning campaign in 2006, and more than Tom Emmer might spend in this entire cycle, too.

And for that money, he’s gotten ads that aren’t any more accurate about Emmer than A4aBM’s dreck.

When I first saw  Entenza’s “Education” ad – which makes the very “tenther”-y claim that Entenza will withdraw from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – I thought that the ad’s claim that Emmer supported NCLB didn’t pass the stench test.  I have spent the past two weeks trying to get confirmation from the Emmer camp (which should hush those of you who’ve been yapping that I am “with the Emmer campaign”, capisce?), so MPR’s Catherine Richert, at MPR’s Polinaut “Poligraph”, got the story first.

I thought, like so many of these scabrous “vote” claims you see in Dems’ ads, that it was a report about an out-of-context vote that was muddied by some sort of procedural or parliamentary foible or another.  I was right:

Entenza’s campaign says Emmer voted against a plan to drop No Child Left Behind in 2008. And at first blush, it would seem that way.

But parliamentary maneuvering on the House floor muddied the intent of the amendment Emmer voted against. It didn’t just end the program; it contained other unrelated provisions.

It’s a tenet of conservatism unto the point of dogma that we want education pushed to the state and, preferably, local level; we take unjustified flak for wanting to abolish the Department of Education.  Emmer is – so we’re told! – nothing if not a thoroughgoing conservative, and Richert’s got the records to prove it.  I’ll add emphasis as appropriate:

In early 2009, Emmer co-sponsored a bill that would have prevented implementation of No Child Left Behind.

Later that year, Emmer told Minnesota Public Radio that he opposes No Child Left Behind.

“I object to the federal government having any law that tells the state of Minnesota, more importantly parents of children in the state of Minnesota, this is how your schools are going to be run,” he said on Dec. 11, 2009.

Emmer supports holding teachers accountable, spokesman Bill Walsh said. He just doesn’t think the federal government should tell the state how to do it.

That’s more like it.

In a radio ad that’s part of the same series, Entenza claims that Emmer proposes “devastating thirty-percent budget cuts”.  That’s another ancient, ripe, stinky rhetorical turd that we thought we’d dispensed with almost two months ago.  Alas, like all DFL propagandists, Entenza’s people apparently believe they can trust to some kind of diminished capacity and short attention span on the voters’ part.

And with Ventura and Franken on our collective electoral conscience, they may have a point.  But we can try to shoot for better, can’t we?

Nick Coleman, longtime bete noir/kicktoy of regional conservative bloggers,  is back on the beach:

The message was eloquently written, but crystal clear. For one year now, Coleman had been a senior fellow at the school’s Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement. He’d tacked his title onto his opinion columns in the Star Tribune each Sunday. Now the school wanted him gone.

Budget challenges had caused the school to reconsider the fellows program, wrote Joe DesJardins, the school’s vice provost. But the real reason for Coleman’s ouster was spelled out in DesJardins’s carefully chosen next words.

“Unfortunately, many of our alumni and friends interpreted your by-line as a Senior Fellow of the McCarthy Center as an implicit SJU endorsement of the opinions you express,” DesJardins wrote. “This has brought St. John’s into the political sphere in ways that we had not anticipated and think is not in St. John’s best long-term interest.”

I’ll give Mr. DesJardins the benefit of a doubt; perhaps he was one of the monks, and he’d swore a vow of never reading the Strib, just like most otherwise independent-thinking and well-informed Minnesotans.  Perhaps he had no idea about Coleman’s decades-long career as a DFL cheerleader, his “Air America Minnesota” talk show, and his history.

And it’s not like he had any road to Damascus moments while working for “Big Mac”; he pretty much romped and played in familiar territory, cheerleading the DFL establishment and catcalling the usurpers.

We’re not done with far-fetched:

“I do think something is out of whack when he’s a part of it and a liberal columnist can’t be,” Coleman says of Kennedy.

“I do think something is out of whack when he’s a part of it and a liberal columnist can’t be,” Coleman says of Kennedy.

It makes it sound like the termination was political.  Which might make more sense if Amy Klobuchar weren’t giving the center’s next lecture, and the center blog didn’t have a subtle but distinct patina of Obama worship.

What Coleman didn’t know was that efforts to unseat him from St. John’s had been brewing for months.

Bob Labat, a 1959 St. John’s grad who has donated to the school every year since, noticed Coleman’s columns right away. Labat found Coleman grating—a quality he considered inappropriate for someone associated with the Catholic school.

“He has every right to be as caustic and as strong in his opinion as he wants to be, but when you’re also writing on the masthead of an academic institution, that’s a problem,” Labat says.

He wasn’t alone. In September, Len Busch, who has given $20,000 to the St. John’s theology department each of the last three years, authored a handwritten message about Coleman.

“As long as St. John’s has this man on the payroll, I will no longer give my money to St. John’s,” Busch wrote. “I will not support lies and false statements and half truths about anyone.”

A lot of us former Strib subscribers know the feeling.

But I don’t whistle past graveyards.  I hope Coleman lands a gig soon.  While there’s no shortage of material, one must neither take things for granted nor wish ill on people; I don’t believe in Karma, but I do think what goes around comes around.

So best of luck, Nick.

In an op-ed in the Strib, the Freedom Foundation’s Jonathan Blake  Jo unload’s on the left’s (and media’s) hypocrisy on Target (emphasis added):

The recent uproar over Target Corp.’s $150,000 contribution to MN Forward, a business-friendly political action committee that is running ads in favor of a probusiness gubernatorial candidate, has officially become a media phenomenon, covered in virtually all of the state’s newspapers, blogs and TV newscasts. It’s even made national news.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s largest public employee unions have already spent five times that sum, more than $750,000, on the upcoming election, virtually all of it in support of a single political party and its allies. That story has been relegated to deep inside the local section, if it is covered at all.

That’s because the owner of the “local section” has a dog in the fight.

Their refusal to endorse Emmer in a primary that he’s going to win by 90 points is kind of a tell…

There’s going to be a new “Minnesota” Poll tomorrow in the Strib.

Here are my fearless predictions; I predict a couple of things:

1. Despite the fact that actual, reputable polls show Tom Emmer inside the margin of error  (despite having been outspent by a 16:1 margin so far in this campaign), the “Minnesota” Poll will show Emmer down, probably by two digits.
2. The local media and DFL-leaning “alternative” media will take this as a huge boost for the DFL…
3. …notwithstanding the fact that the poll will drastically oversample Democrat-leaning voters.
4. But you’ll only learn that on conservative blogs and talk radio.

This pattern is iron-clad and absolute; the Minnesota Poll is a useless appendage that serves only as a morale-builder for the DFL; the only exception has been in 2008, when the GOP did so badly that the DFL didn’t need the help.

This year?  Facing a solid GOP candidate with three nonentities and facing an “Independence Party” candidate that will take three DFL votes for every two Republicans, in a year when anti-tax-and-spend fever is sweeping every part of this nation outside the Beltway and Kenwood?

The morale-builder is needed.

My favorite bit of Minnesota Poll history; immediately before the 2002 gubernatorial election, the Minnesota Poll showed Roger Moe with a slim but significant lead, while Tim Pawlenty and IndyParty candidate Tim Penny duked it out for second in a near-statistical tie.  You may recall that Pawlenty won pretty handily, while Penny got about half the share the MNPoll predicted.

Luke Hellier at MDE has more:

Let’s use the 2006 Governor’s Race as an example.
On November 6 the poll showed the following:
Tim Pawlenty 39%
Mike Hatch 42%
Peter Hutchinson 7%
Just a day later, Minnesotans went to the poll an reelected Tim Pawlenty to a second term. The actual results were:
Tim Pawlenty 46%
Mike Hatch 45%
Peter Hutchinson 6%
In the US Senate Race, the poll showed Mark Kennedy only receiving 33%. On election day he received 38%
Going back 2 years earlier, the poll had President George Bush only with 42% of the support in Minnesota. On election day the President received the support of 48% of Minnesotans.
Needless to say, the Minnesota Poll vastly under estimates the support of Republicans while inflating that of Democrats.

Powerline was also shredding the Minnesota Poll long before most people had heard of either the poll or the blog.

The whole intent is to try to demoralize the undecided but GOP-leaning voter – the ones that are going to decide this election.

 In going through the Daily Caller’s yeoman work in releasing the Journolist archives, I’m struck by nothing so much as what a bunch of intellectual lightweights the “elite” media are.

I read all fifteen pages of the list’s exchange regarding Sarah Palin and the birth of Trig – right at the beginning of the Trigger conspiracy theory – and was appalled by:

• How very very bad at analysis – as in, mathematical and statistical analysis – these people are.
• How very, very hard the women in the discussion – especially the few older ones who’d managed to justify having children – had to work to try to convince the rest of the participants that they were being hypocritical in attacking Palin’s (ostensible?) choice to fly back to Alaska for Trig’s birth
• How very, very difficult it seemed for some of the participants to square their “feminism” and “pro-choice” rhetoric with the idea that Sarah Palin was qualified to choose when and where to have the baby
• What a very, very trite group of people they are.  Bob Mackey on who, and why, McCain should have chosen someone else for Vice President: “Libermann [sic] would have been a better choice from that perspective. At least he has experience and can find Eastern Market for Sunday brunch.”   That’s right; because the VP is only one omelet away from the presidency?  Knowing DC’s social circles is the dispositive criterion for a potential President?

On the one hand, it’s depressing.  On the other – the idea that the level of “intellect” among the left’s “elites” is so very, very…er, intellectually attainable is a bit of a kick.

Mark your calendars for a year from this past weekend; “Netroots Nation” is coming to Minneapolis.

Twin Cities’ center-right bloggers; if we can’t three days worth of classic comedy gold, we should all just pack up shop.

I just got this video from this past weekends’ “Netroots Nation” festivities:

As we Republicans look at yet another year of selective reporting and overt bias in action (who needs Journolist in a media hive like the Twin Cities?), it’s important to remember that that are those who believe the media is conservative.

It’s Eric Pusey from MN “Progressive” Project:

I found it interesting that the editors of the Star Tribune thought that the employment statuses of the MN-02 DFL candidates running against Rep. John Kline were newsworthy while a national story about Rep. Michele Bachmann wasn’t.

Let’s look at the allegations:

The essence of the story is that Dan Powers (DFL-endorsed) was a contractor and collected unemployment while Shelley Madore’s contract wasn’t renewed.  Eric Roper and the editors of the Strib think something is fishy.  They consider this more newsworthy than Bachmann stating “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another” if Republicans regain the House and “we don’t have to fund any of these programs and that’s exactly what we need to do – defund all of this nonsense and then unwind it.”

So let’s look at this from the perspective of an editor:

News: Two congressional candidates have financial irregularities (provided that they’re not Obama cabinet nominees).

Not News: Michele Bachmann says something that gets liberals exercised, but is really no different from a zillion other such incidents.

What is also interesting about the Strib’s political coverage is that they very rarely (verging on never) cover Kline.  The latest news (1 week old) is that Kline opposed funding child nutritional programs with the following hypocritical excuse:

“The debt crisis is the greatest national security threat we face,” ranking Republican John Kline of Minnesota said. “The cost of this legislation cannot be ignored.”

If the Strib did cover this story about Kline’s vote, what do you think the chances are the someone like Roper would note that Kline supported the Bush agenda of tax cuts and borrowing to pay for two wars?

News: Er, Kline voted against a bill?   No, the only news here is that the word “hypocritical” has been devalued to the point of meaninglessness; hypocrisy is holding someone to a moral standard to which you yourself are not willing to adhere.   Think John Kline is inconsistent on deficit spending?

Not News: Kline voted with the Bush Administration – while the Bush administration was in office.  Two to eight years ago.

The Tic-controlled Congress has the  confidence of 11% of the American people:

Gallup’s 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, recorded in 2008.

To put this in perspective, used car salesmen got 24%, Lindsay Lohan got 18%, and the Snooki from Jersey Shore clocked 14%

The part that should have gotten the headline?  The Presidency dropped from 51 to 39% over the past year.

Let’s see if we can get it into single digits!

If you’re a conservative, especially in a liberal gulag like the Twin Cities, you don’t need to be reminded that…:

• all too many liberals don’t just disagree with conservatives; they actively, passionately hate them (in a manner that most conservatives, no, do not reciprocate)
• The mainstream media are biased against conservatives and conservatism in a way that is way too systematic to be either random or a matter of a few journalists and their individual worldviews.

As such, the most interesting question to come out of the “Journolist” flap isn’t so much how biased are the media as it is how many more “Journolists” are there?

Given the absolute lock-step uniformity among most of the Twin Cities media when it comes to politics, I’d be personally amazed if there weren’t some form of back-channel collusion going on.

Oh, yeah – and many of  our “elite” media are a bunch of sick bastards…

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

….without a whole lot of regard for their fellow citizen…

When the writer Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article about immigration for National Review, for example, blogger Ed Kilgore didn’t even bother to grapple with Hanson’s arguments. Instead Kilgore dismissed Hanson’s piece out of hand as “the kind of Old White Guy cultural reaction that is at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. It’s very close in spirit to the classic 1970s racist tome, The Camp of the Saints, where White Guys struggle to make up their minds whether to go out and murder brown people or just give up.”

…or democracy…:

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air.

Back when Nick Coleman used to rant “The buh-law-ggers wunt tuh duhstroy thuh mediuh”, I and a lot of conservative bloggers protested “No!  We just want to hold it accountable!”.

Nowadays?  Given the extent to which the craft’s “elite” High Priests of Knowledge seem to have been trying to use their power and position to control the country rather than report the news?  Screw ’em.  The NYTimes, the WaPo, the Big Three, , the Strib, CNN – screw ’em all.  They have all gone way way beyond “bias” to become a de facto political party.

And I don’t mean the kind that runs candidates in elections.

…and, by coincidence of course, of the entire DFL establishment, media and Sorosphere:  “Hey, no fair that corporations can donate money to politics the exact same way that unions and liberal plutocrats do and have always done, even under McCain/Feingold!”