…how, starting with the NYTimes and the WaPo, and then filtering down through the HuffPo and the Daily Kos…

…and thence downward through MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC…

…and then through “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, the “Ed Schultz” and “liberal knockoff of Laura Ingraham” “Stephanie Miller” shows…

…and from there down through the morass of the leftyblogosphere, the “TBoggs” and “Think Progresses”, “PZ Meyerses” and “Minnesota Independents”…

…the meme will spread over the course of the next few days…

 …that “Republicans do as they are told”.

P.S.:  Mr. President?  Stop campaigning!  You are, ostensibly, everyone’s President.

For another three and a quarter years, anyway.

…but he doesn’t write about it.

At least not on Nick Coleman | Unbound and Unbowed blog, which is also Unupdated.

Home.

It’s one of the most powerful words in the English language.

And it’s one of the most powerful feelings there is – as an observer or as a participant.

The soldier returns home.  The young runaway comes back to home and family.  The prodigal son walks back up the sidewalk.

But…er…this?

With bright white lights, a hushed atmosphere and chunks of steel twisted into impossible shapes, it feels more like a museum than a garage.

A hometown National Guard unit, back from Afghanistan, meets its family at the armory?

An unjustly-imprisoned man is released to his family in the garage of the courthouse?

But it is the new home for crucial remnants of the old Interstate 35W bridge.

Oh.

I mean, looking for a local angle is part and parcel of what the news business does.  I know that.  But wreckage?

The piece in the Strib is called “Remnants of 35W Bridge Come Home” or some such.

The story is actually interesting, if you have any interest in engineering, the law, forensic sciences and the like:

The bridge’s many pieces are all in Minnesota again — now that the National Transportation Safety Board has returned the parts it needed for its investigation. The bridge parts arrived from the East Coast over the weekend and are being housed in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakdale built especially for that purpose. There the parts will be protected from wind and water so that lawyers and engineers can examine them for the many lawsuits related to the bridge’s collapse.

All well and good – and useful news.

But is it just me, or is that just about the longest stretch to imbue sentiment into a story that we’ve ever seen?

So why is the left – not just the the media and the attack-PR-osphere and the left’s lumped horde of chattering classes, but indeed the Administration itself – so invested in attacking the informational lynchpins of the opposition, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News?

Not to mention slandering the motivations and character of every single dissenter to their polities, on a national, media-wide and systematic basis?

Because the opposition just keeps growing.  The April 15 tea parties drew 600,000 people; the 9/17 parties, millions. 

Dissent from Hope n Change isn’t going away.

And they’d so hoped that it would.

Four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 elections, a slew of radio consultants made a zillion dollars telling talk-radio program directors that conservative talk radio was dead.

It was wishful thinking, of course.  And now that conservatives are the underdogs again, we have entered – as I predicted during our election-night broadcast – a second Golden Age of Conservative Talk Radio.

The I Hate The Media blog R unpacks the latest Arbitron ratings nationwide in head-to-head competitions between Rush Limbaugh affiliates and affiliates carrying Ed Schultz and/or Stephanie Miller, the closest the left’s come to “successful” programming so far.

And it’s not a pretty picture – unless you like conservative talk radio.  Then, it’s a very, very pretty picture. 

Note that the ratings below are for the stations as a whole, not for Limbaugh (or Schultz/Miller):

1. New York
WABC Rush 3.7 (8th in market)
WWRL Ed/Steph 0.2 (50th in market tie)

2. Los Angeles
KFI Rush 5.0 (1st in market)
KTLK Ed/Steph 0.4 (48th in market tie)

Catch that?  In two of the nation’s largest and most liberal markets, the conservative talk leader not only beats liberal talk, but does it by an order of magnitude and more.

8. Washington
WMAL Rush 2.7 (17th in market)
WTNT Ed only 0.3 (33rd in market tie)

This, not long after Washinton’s “Obama 1260” all-leftytalk station bit the dust.

16. Minneapolis
KTLK-FM Rush 3.6 (13th in market)
KTNF Ed/Steph 1.1 (21st in market)

It’s not “libtalk’s” best performance – that’d be in Seattle, where the Rush affiliate only gets 2.5 times the ratings the FastEddie/MiniIngraham station gets.

But Rush is hampered by the fact that he’s on KTLK-FM, a station that only recently adopted conservatism as a driving format motif, and has otherwise made a royal botch of things until fairly recently. 

Now, there’s a fair point to be made here; liberals don’t need to listen to talk radio; they already have the mainstream media, plus National Public Radio, plus MSNBC, CNN and CNBC, plus the Big Three, plus their real news standardbearer, Jon Stewart.

Andt that’s true.  The real point of this post isn’t so much “how bad is conservative talk clobbering liberal talk” – everyone in their right mind knew it would – as it is “how wrong were the consultants four years ago”, and “how does that inform the Administration’s current campaign to demonize all dissent?”

Very wrong, and very much, which is providing both a mission for the Administration and an inconvenient truth for its mainstream media supporters:

Yes, the release of Arbitron radio ratings for August 2009 created quite a stir in Los Angeles last week when it was revealed that AM news-talk giant KFI had moved into first place.

But judging by the coverage in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Business Journal, this feat was somehow accomplished without the help of the medium’s star performer, Rush Limbaugh.In covering the achievement, the latter two publications didn’t even mention Rush, while the Times noted Limbaugh only in passing deep into one story and left him out of another entirely.Is it really that hard to admit Rush could be so popular in their own backyard?

Here’s what we know about Limbaugh’s contribution to KFI’s feat, along with some new details on his performance elsewhere during August: The Rush Limbaugh Show gained a full share point overall, from 5.9 to 6.9 to take first place with a weekly cume of 635,700 listeners. With men 35-64, the jump was from 4.7 to 5.6. In the 11am hour, Rush pulled in a mammoth 6.3.

These results are cropping up from coast to coast (read Maloney’s entire piece).

Which tells the media that the peasants are revolting.

And that is why the White House and the media it keeps in its hip pocket have switched into full-blown smear machine mode.

TANGENT:  During the Bush years, the left clutched at its pearls and accused Karl Rove of running a “smear machine” through any number of right-leaning groups – the Swiftboat Vets, Fox News, you name it.  But can you imagine what’d happen if there’d been the faintest hint of Bush Administration involvement in leaning on media dissent – which, unlike the current Administration, was omnipresent and utterly vicious?

Something for all you conservatives (and people who care about free markets and being able to get decent health care in this country) on Twitter:

I’ve been @ messaging folks but hopefully you can give this some
traction: Suppose you tweet the following:

Please RT — select any number of pages from health care bill
http://is.gd/4rxIr, read them, & post results at #crowdread

Nobody said it would be easy, of course:

I already have a (half-a**ed — I can’t read that s**t!) entry…

This would be one of those areas where conservatives’ domination of Twitter could be a very good thing.

I may do it on the blog, here, too.  Presuming I can make heads or tails of any of it.

To: President Obama

From: Mitch Berg

Re:  The War That Matters

Mr. President,

You’ve been extremely lukewarm about supporting General McChrystal’s proposal for a troop surge to support his counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq.

You basically abdicated the US policy of support for missile defense, selling out our allies in Eastern Europe in the face of Vladimir Putin.

When the Soviets Russians pounded the uppity Georgians, you sent the plucky, pro-Western, freedom-loving Georgians a ship full of Hope and Change, and nothing else.

And of course, when the Iranians were shooting protesters in the streets, you made concerned noises and went quietly away.

Little did the world’s despots and tinpots know that you were just saving your energy for the real battle:

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

Attaway, Mister President.  Because even if it were true, and even if Fox were a GOP “mouthpiece” – and as far as its news-gathering goes, it’s not – well, goodness knows that our country doesn’t need at least one group of contrary journalists keeping big government accountable, do we?  Because your Administration has abolished the laws of human behavior and created a government that doesn’t need to be held accountable?

As visibly as you crave the approval of European elites, you do realize that most private European news outlets actually are partisan in editorial stance?  That while The Guardian and Die Zeit and Le Monde lean left, the Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine lean overtly to the right, and are open about it?  And that each of them rides their “opposition” pretty hard, which makes the “opposition” sad, but occasionally trips up some big scandals?  Hence holding government accountable…

…Aaaaaah.  I get it now.

That is all.

P.S.:  When does the 2008 campaign end, anyway?

To:  Jon and Kate Gosselin, tiresome fake celebrities

From: Mitch Berg, blissfully above it all.

Re: The Lowered Bar

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Gosselin,

I’ve never watched Jon And Kate Plus Eight, because I think you are a couple of whores – or worse, pimps, whoring out your children to the pathetic, toothless johns that are our celebrity-stricken, illiterate, slackjawed, drooling media.  I think that the relentless publicity you seek is going to leave you with eight Dana Platos and Todd Bridges(es) one of these days.  I think you have only begun to see a reckoning for your invincible stupidity.

But after the events of this past week, and the whole “balloon boy” media frenzy teed up by a couple of your fellow idiot celebrity-wannabe parents…:

The parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, met with Larimer County investigators for much of Saturday afternoon amid lingering questions about whether he perpetrated a publicity stunt when his 6-year-old son Falcon vanished into the rafters of his garage while the world thought he was zooming through the sky in a flying saucer-like helium balloon.But Sheriff Jim Alderden didn’t say who would be charged or what the charges would be. His deputies later showed up at the Heene’s Fort Collins home with a search warrant and at least three of them began a search. Sgt. Ian Stewart declined so say what they were after.

Alderden on Saturday didn’t call Thursday’s hours-long drama a hoax, but he expressed disappointment that he couldn’t level more serious charges in the incident, which sent police and the military scrambling to save young Falcon Heene as millions of worried television viewers watched.

…I’ll tell you for the record that you two are no longer the single most stupid, tiresome excuse for a “story” to obsess our media.

No, all is not forgiven, per se; I’m just saying that as much as I despise the two of you, there is at least one couple on this planet I wish were eaten by mice (after being tied in a sack with every single media figure that’s given your pathetic, exploitive saga breathless coverage) even more.

Five and a half years ago, the Northern Alliance Radio Network was the first all-blogger, all alt-media radio show in the world.

I’ve been waiting to see if other radio stations would give it a try – indeed, as desperate for free content as they are, I’m mildly shocked that the Twin Cities’ AM950, our token liberal station, hasn’t snapped up a bunch of leftybloggers to try to do for their schedule what the NARN did for AM1280.  There was a station in Boston that had a blogger-run show a few years back, but I think it’s no more.

But it was gratifying to note that Rob Port – proprietor of the excellent Say Anything , North Dakota’s foremost political blog – is on several nights a week at Fargo’s excellent AM1100 “The Flag”.

Port has also put together some regional syndication with at least one other station in central North Dakota – making him a real network!

Tune in!

To: Star/Tribune

From: Mitch Berg, one-time subscriber

Re: A Fine Idea

Dear Star/Tribune,

 The next time one of the gabbling bobbleheads you call “columnists” or “editorial board members” warns us that the Twin Cities will become a “Cold Atlanta” if we don’t fund a rail line or a gay forensic dance troupe or just hike taxes through the roof, do try to remember that sometimes those wild-eyed southerners have some really good ideas.

This is from yesterday, in the Atlanta Journal/Constitution (with emphasis added by me):

After listening carefully to readers and thinking deeply about the modern role of a newspaper in elections, the AJC Editorial Board is taking a new approach to election coverage, beginning with this November’s elections.

Going forward, our board will use its unique position to work for readers in pursuing with candidates the issues that are critical to the future of our community. The board will provide readers with clear, concise information about candidates’ positions and records. The AJC will no longer endorse political candidates.

I know, I know – the Strib, or at least its editorial board and opinion page, are an adjunct arm of the DFL communications office; when your master calls, you bark like a well-trained puppy.

Just saying.  Your relentless editorial bias has cost you more readership than you know.

That is all.

Since the American left has made “spot the code word” a national sport, let’s see if we can spot any in today’s Strib editorial which, as I predicted (but didn’t write) yesterday, follows immediately on a story from yesterday that seemed to try to make the case for govenrment takeover of city trash systems.

That government is the answer to all things to the Strib Editors is no big shock.  That they are resorting to name-calling to try to make their case.

So let’s highlight the code words as we read the editorial:

It’s a funny thing about garbage: We need to get rid of it, but we’re often possessive and parochial about who takes it away.

As opposed to “perfectly happy with the status quo”, and “sick of paying taxes”, of course.  Couldn’t let that into the story…

To: Paid “independent” “alternative” water-carriers for George Soros (et. al)

From: Mitch Berg, actual independent

Re:  Your Latest Meme

So first, we had “truther” – people, usually Democrats (including, during the 2004 election, as many as a third of Democrats, according to one survey which, to be fair, didn’t distinguish between respondents with questions and the real true believers), who believe that George W. Bush and the US government were behind 9/11.

Then came the “birthers” – people, usually Republicans (including, during the past election, as many as a quarter of Republicans, according to one survey which, to be fair once again, didn’t distinguish between true believers and those who are merely curious about the flap about Obama’s birth certificate), who question President Obama’s constitutional qualification to be President.

The meme is thus set; taking an oddball conspiracy, tacking “-er” onto the end to connote a sense of unthinking, unreasoning credulity, even insanity.

Which brings us to the latest manifestation of this meme – the “Tenther“.

Of course, while 9/11 and Birth Certificate conspiracies are easily and often hilariously debunked, the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution has the inconvenient properties of being both part of the United States Constitution and, as it happens, an inconvenient hurdle (for those who see the Constitution as “hurdles” to big government) to the current Administration’s more gigantistic plans (i.e., most of them).
Which explains, I suspect, the Alinskier and Soroser fingerprints on the whole meme.  Otherwise, the left’s most-considered response is “States Rights?  Why, that means you favor slavery!”

That is all-er.

Tom Barnard is going to retire.

Eventually:

Tom Barnard, the most popular, powerful broadcaster in Twin Cities radio, announced Tuesday that he plans to quit his KQ92 morning program three years from now.”I just don’t fit into the show anymore,” Barnard said late Tuesday night. “The corporate climate is not what I signed up for.”

It’s possible Barnard meant it as a toss-off – but it caught my attention. 

Tom Barnard is a veteran of the classic radio industry; the “don’t pack a lunch, you probably won’t need one” world of bouncing up and down the dial, your employment subject not only to your own talent (Barnard’ always had it) but the whims and vagaries of a group of managers who largely got where they are because they’re deeply dysfunctional. 

That’s not a group slur, by the way; the skills required to succeed in major-market radio management  – especially among general managers and high-profile program directors – are often indistinguishable, to regular people, from personality disorders.  Major-market radio has always – at least in my cognitive lifetime – been like working for a bunch of hyperactive teenagers; results have to happen now; no excuses are accepted.  A new program director usually had a window of six months – sometimes a year, sometimes three months – to show big results, and had absolute power to get them, and no real impetus to expend much in the way of social grace or ethnical qualms about how they got them. 

That was in the seventies and eighties – the world Barnard is used to.

And now it’s getting bad!

(Disclosure:  Salem Radio, for whom I do the Northern Alliance program, is broadly an exception.  Most of the people I’ve dealt with at Salem Twin Cities have been fairly functional, complete people.  It’s almost like not being in radio at all…).

Barnard, 57, who for decades has dominated local morning radio like no other broadcaster in the country, casually mentioned retiring during Tuesday’s show, but he confirmed later in the day that it was a serious announcement.

I did kind of catch that when I had the show on in the bathroom yesterday morning.  I’d wondered if I’d heard that right.

I’m not sure what’s behind his decision.  I’d like to think that it’s because he’ll be sixty, he’ll be coming off a quarter century of dominating morning radio in a major market like nobody in modern radio history (not even Howard Stern has ever gotten the kind of numbers Barnard has gotten for almost a generation now), he’s socked away a ton of money, and he’s realized that big-market music radio is not just a treadmill, but these days is a treadmill on the lower decks of the Titanic, and he wants to do something he enjoys after a long, successful career.

Now, what will this mean, and what does it say, about the radio market in the Twin Cities?

More later this week.

Remember when photographing servicepeoples’ caskets coming back from the Middle East was the most important story on the media’s list?

No?

That’s OK – with Barack Obama in office, either does the media:

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“These young men and women are heroes,” Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. “The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong.”

Not to bag on the Administration; they at least followed through on one promise:

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.

But with no interest in tying an Administration for which they were utterly in the bag to the escalating cost of a war they’d never supported…?

But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. “It’s really fallen off,” says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. “The flurry of interest has subsided.”

That’s an understatement. When the casket bearing Air Force Tech. Sgt. Phillip Myers, of Hopewell, Va., arrived at Dover the night of April 5 — the first arrival in which press coverage was allowed — there were representatives of 35 media outlets on hand to cover the story…Fast forward to today. On Sept. 2, when the casket bearing the body of Marine Lance Cpl. David Hall, of Elyria, Ohio, arrived at Dover, there was just one news outlet — the Associated Press — there to record it. The situation was pretty much the same when caskets arrived on Sept. 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23 and 26. There has been no television coverage at all in September.

Now, it’s not like the war in Afghanistan is going anywhere soon.  Indeed, it looks like the Obama Administration is going to be to the country what Ike (at best) or LBJ (not at best) were to Vietnam (allowing in advance that historical parallels, especially about wars, are famously dicey).

So where’d the concern go?

Probably also resting in Crawford, Texas.  That’s my hunch.

Jon Stewart, last night:

Iran’s been “Put on notice?”  We’ve given Iran the same warning Colbert gives to bears?

It was kind of interesting, seeing the level of…belligerency (?) on the Daily Show?

Normally, this might be considered good news:

Minnesotans are feeling slightly better about the economy and their finances. But many are still feeling the effects of the recession in their day-to-day lives, according to a Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.

But of course, this is the Strib’s Minnesota Poll.

So there really are only two questions:

1. How wrong is it?
2. How is that wrong-ness intended to benefit the DFL?

A generation of left-wing agitation directly led to violence in the streets of Pittsburgh this week.

The clashes began after hundreds of protesters, many advocating against capitalism, tried to march from an outlying neighborhood toward the convention center where the summit is being held.The protesters banged on drums and chanted “Ain’t no power like the power of the people, ’cause the power of the people don’t stop.”

The marchers included small groups of self-described anarchists, some wearing dark clothes and bandanas and carrying black flags. Others wore helmets and safety goggles.

One banner read, “No borders, no banks,” another, “No hope in capitalism.” A few minutes into the march, protesters unfurled a large banner reading “NO BAILOUT NO CAPITALISM” with an encircled “A,” a recognized sign of anarchists.

Violence, injuries and much property damage ensued. 

This sort of violence is the inevitable, direct result of the kind of rhetoric we’re getting from the left:

• Michael Moore’s assaults on “capitalism”
• The rhetoric of the likes of Keith Ellison and Dennis Kucinich – prominent Democratic/leftist legislators
• The demonstrations at the homes of AIG executives by groups of rent-an-outragers (we call them “TeabAIGers”), who made it very clear that the political is utterly personal
• The writings of vital lefty pundits like Nick Coleman and their disparaging references to “Big Cheeses”…
• The anti-business rhetoric of the likes of Andy Stein of the SEIU.
• The demonization of conservative causes, groups, and even thoughts by Janet Napolitano

…and many, many more, it’s clear to me that it’s inevitable that the left’s rhetoric on the economy is not only going to lead directly to violence; it’s already led there.

(more…)

I tuned into “Fresh Air” with, um, aaaah, um, Terry Gross on MPR last night for a bit…

…and heard what sounded, at first blush, like a typical “lefty goes among the conservatives” story; Gross was interviewing some kind of “mainstream”/lefty journalist about his visit to the Value Voters Summit.

The better news – the part that made me actually stay tuned for most of the episode – was that it was David Weigel of the Washington Independent, one of precious few generally good reporters in the entire Sorosnet “Center for “Independent” Media” chain.

Weigel has an interesting beat…:

Is the conservative right undergoing a transformation? Journalist David Weigel thinks so. Weigel covers the Republican party for the online magazine The Washington Independent, where he’s written about tea party protests, anti-health care activists, the “birther” movement and the recent Values Voter summit.

I’m not sure what’s the most interesting thing about the interview: that the left thinks they need to study conservatism like it’s an anthropology experiment?  That Terry, um, uh, Gross seems to eager to pass on the current A-list of anti-right slanders (lookit all those racist teagaggers!)?
But Weigel’s interview is interesting; it seems that Weigel, almost alone among the media and left (pardon the redundancy), notices what we tea-partiers have figured out, something I noted in my speech to the Minnesota Tea Party last week; the right seems to be focused less on individual issues – life, immigration, security – and more on the contitutional first principles that need to link us.

It’s actually good news.

Did someone say the President is just a tad overexposed?

He’s turning the presidency into an infomercial,” warned former White House speechwriter Matt Latimer. “It’s not just damaging to the White House. It will also ultimately hurt President Obama’s image as a fresh, non-Washington leader.”

The media blitz has won Obama unprecedented wall-to-wall coverage in the mainstream media.

The factoid?  Obama has had three times the TV appearances of Bush and Clinton combined.

Fawning?  They got it!

In the New York Times alone, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, 405 stories on the Obama administration have appeared on the front page through mid-August of this year totaling 119,678 column inches. That’s 9,973 column feet of Obama coverage on the Times front page alone.

Endless This Campaign!

“…they are workin’ the umps all the time, I think it works with the [other media outlets], it doesn’t work with me.”

I’ll be joining a few thousand of our closest friends at the Minnesota Tea Party in a few hours. 

It’ll be at the Minnesota Capitol Grounds, starting around 5PM.  I’ll be joining a list of other speakers – Constitutional lawyer Marjorie Holsten, Doug Dahl, KLTK personality Sue Jeffers, Free market majordomo and AM1280 host David Strom, Healthcare reform powerhouse Twilia Brase, Dennis Madden, Doug Malsom, and KTLK-FM host Chris Baker, along with Bradlee Dean from “You Can Run International” and AM1280’s “Sons of Liberty”.  KKMS’ Lee Michaels hosts.

Me?  I’ll be speaking bright and early; just like when I was playing guitar in the bars, I’m the opening act.

And it’s gonna be fun!  See you there!

CNN has resorted to cruel, baseless name-calling.

Ms. Klobuchar may not possess the ideal height-weight ratio, but she is not a cow.

(please direct complaints on Johnny Roosh and/or this tasteless, racist, cruel-to-animals post to feedbackinthedark at yahoo.com)

The Event:  While bowling, David Strom knocked down all but the 8 and 9 pin, and then – improbably – picked up the spare.

The Shorter Shot In The Dark: David Strom rolled a spare.

The Shorter True North: David Strom rolled a spare. (Comment on this post over at Shot In The Dark)

The Shorter Scott Johnson: In a scene reminiscent of the pandemonium after Jimi Hendrix’ tour de force at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, our good friend David Strom did to the pins what he’s spent a career doing to the opponents of Milton Friedman.

The Shorter Dump Bachmann: I bet it was actually Michele Bachmann dressed in a Strom suit.  Developing… 

The Shorter MNPost: We asked U of Minnesota Political Science professor Larry Jacobs to put Strom’s score in context for us…

The Shorter Ed Morrissey: David Strom rolled a spare – but he shouldn’t pin his hopes on a career as a bowler.

The Shorter Minnesota Progressive Project: David Strom knocked down 17 pens, just like Chimpy McBushitler knocked down teh Twin Towers.

The Shorter Lori Sturdevant: David Strom rolled a spare. Elmer Anderson, a real Minnesota Republican, would have left a few pins for Democrats to pick up.

The Shorter Dusty Trice: David Strom attacks mob!

Sunday’s Strib editorial actually ends with a modestly useful point:

Education has never been as strategically important to national well-being as it is today, as other nations move quickly to overtake this country in the knowledge-based economy of the future. Given that challenge, a simple speech on the value of education should not be a matter for partisan contention.

Well, yeah.  It should not be.  Education has much, much bigger problems than a speech from a President. 

And I personally don’t have a huge problem with the Presidents speech, in and of itself.  The bureaucracy certainly overstepped in its rah-rah approach to publicizing and curriculumizing the speech – it smacked of personality cultism like a 2×4 to the back of the head “smacks of” impact – and people do need to be vigilant about this kind of thing.

But the Strib is shocked, shocked, to realize that Americans disagree about politics:

 But these are odd times. Unfortunately for our children, even a back-to-school welcome can further divide us.

True.  But the address is hardly alone.

But just seven months into the Obama presidency, nothing is simple. The political lesson some seem intent on teaching our kids today is rooted in what appears to be a growing lack of respect for the office of the president. How very sad.

A “Growing lack of respect” for the office of president?

What did the Strib – as reliably DFL-leaning a publication as exists – have to say about the endless, toxic disrespect that was paid to the previous President? 

Bear in mind that disagreeing with policy isn’t direspectful – conservatives opposed Bush’s spending, quaint as it seems today. 

This after eight years of running columns that referred to President Bush as “the occupant”; eight years of Garrison Keillor’s sniffing down his nose over Bush’s accent with nary a word about policy; eight years of Susan Lenfestey’s paranoid, hate-drenched Bush derangement.

Yeah, Strib.  Your concern for respect for the office is touching.

It ought to give Americans pause about the toll of excessive partisanship when the president is faulted for planning to urge the nation’s schoolchildren to learn their lessons. On Tuesday, the first day of school for many Americans, the president’s brief address should be a valuable reminder that students serve their country as well as themselves when they succeed academically. That message deserves a top-level spokesman.

And the notion of “respect for the office” deserves a spokesman who isn’t marinading in cynical hypocrisy.

I do try to get along with people.  Even liberals.  Even leftybloggers.  Part of it is that I grew up a liberal, in a liberal family; I’m not one of those who sees liberals as an evil “enemy”, necessarily – because I used to be one of them, and I was no more “evil” or “enemy” then than I am now. 

And there are some good leftybloggers out there.  I’ve called them out when I see them. 

Which doesn’t change the fact that the Twin Cities’ leftysphere is one of the world’s mother lodes of Mittyesque fantasy, deranged paranoia, hopelessly hatred-addled ranting masquerading as “thought”, and (at the end of the day) mindless passing-on of what ones’ superiors want passed on.

But every once in a while, a leftyblog tries to actually “report” the “news”.

Now, as I noted last weekend, a couple of minions from Dustrytrice.com (a DFLer whose blog is to Minnesota Democrats Exposed as Debbie Gibson was to Chrissie Hynde) were busy videotaping GOP gubernatorial candidates’ appearances on the NARN last weekend.   They stood there for two hours, getting vid of Paul Kolls, Pat Anderson and Marty Seifert and, as I got off the air, I saw they were getting ready to film Laura Brod.

I mentioned this to Laura, who is the sort of irrepressible conservative that will no doubt get her labelled as “crazy” by the DFL noise machine in fairly short order here.  Always looking for a scrap, she walked over to introduce herself to the camera guys.

And I thought “Hm.  I wonder how this is going to come out?”  I already had a hint; earlier, Trice had twittered that the utterly mild-mannered Paul Kolls – easily the lowest-key of the four three and a half gubernatorial hopefuls – was “hateful”.  I figured “this is gonna be a doozy”.

So I was mildly shocked to read Trice saying that Brod – who is nothing if not a good GOP trooper – had “said”:

Over the busy opening weekend a few DUSTYTRICE.COM tipsters were volunteering to help tape over at the Patriot Radio booth. They caught up with Rep. Laura Brod as she was getting ready to go on air. One of the tipsters mentioned that none of the GOP candidates were speaking at the GOP booth.

Well, according to Laura Brod they aren’t letting them speak.

Huh. 

Well, I took the liberty of talking with Brod before our NARN interview yesterday, and emailing her this morning just to make sure.  And while the both communications were off the record, let’s just assure you that that was not what Laura Brod said.  She said nothing about the GOP not “allowing” candidates to speak at the booth.

So what I want to know is why the MN GOP is preventing their candidates from speaking to the 1.6 million Minnesotans at the Fair?

And what I want to know is, given that Brod said nothing of the sort, and Dustrytrice.com has absolutely no corroboration of this rather odd charge, where does this curious claim come from? 

Oh, yeah.

We know their booth is only seeing light traffic,

[althought not nearly as light as the DFL’s; I spend two hours a day watching the place from my vantage point across the street at the Patriot booth; it’s a morgue, even though it’s at one of the highest traffic intersections at the fairgrounds.  And I’m seeing easily 2-3 times as much GOP swag and flair as I am DFL as I wander a, which is a huge turnaround from last year] 

 so are the GOP party bosses afraid nobody will be there to listen? Are they worried that the extremist right-wing candidates (Pat Anderson, Tom Emmer) may drag down the more moderate candidates (Bill Haas)?

Nah, Dusty.  In the age of Obama, conservatism is not a drag. 

Ed Schultz bags out on one of his radio shows:

Its been an interesting couple of months in Ed Schultz news, which is never usually an interesting news category unless you find men who consider shouting insults to be keen political analysis to be interesting

I don’t, as a rule – but when Schultz is involved, you have to handicap a bit. 

First Schultz and his North Dakota rival Scott Hennen (full disclosure: I guest host for Hennen and have my own show on his station) announced a partnership whereby Schultz would host a morning show on Hennen’s recently-acquired AM station in southeast North Dakota and debate with Hennen himself once a week on Hennen’s morning show.

This sparked a great deal of criticism of Hennen which I never quite understood.  I understand that a lot of people don’t like Schultz (including many on his own side of the political divide), but as far as Hennen goes what’s wrong with debating with the other side? 

The whole “if you talk with the “enemy” some of it rubs off on you” school of thought is something that irritates the piss out of me when it’s liberals doing the whinging. It doesn’t bother me any less among conservatives. 

Anyway, last week during the Hennen vs. Schultz debate Schultz got so angry he hung up during the program.

If it was anything like last year’s “debates” between Schultz and Michael Medved, I’ll bet it didn’t take long.  Schultz wasn’t Medved’s intellectual peer.  He isn’t Hennen’s equal.  For that matter, Tonya Harding outmatches the guy.

Then Schultz pulls the plug on his radio show on Hennen’s station.  We can at least be glad that Schultz didn’t get so angry that he got drunk and punched a girl (as he’s been known to do) but even so that seems like a sissy move.

Sissy?  Perhaps.

“The move of a guy who is trying to fight way above his intellectual weight class”?  Definitely.