I’ll be guesting on Radio Free Nation on BlogTalkRadio tonight with Marty Owings and a cast of characters.

I’m the token conservative guest – one on three.

And it’s still not a fair fight.

The Brits deny Geert Wilders – critic of Islamofascism – entrance to the UK because it might upset Moslems who are busy picking on Jewish kids.

US Senators jump on board for a reprise of the “Fairness Doctrine”.

And a dictator messes with a hero who’s already notched one dictatorship:

Nobel laureate, former Polish prime minister, and hero of the Cold War Lech Walesa will not be allowed to visit Venezuela ahead of that country’s referendum on extending the rule of Hugo Chavez. El Jefe told Venezuelan media that Walesa was unwelcome in Caracas, where he was set to meet with opposition student groups, and would be prevented from entering the country. After Walesa cancelled his visit, Chavez claimed that he would, in fact, be allowed through customs but would be “closely monitored” on his visit.

The left’s chattering classes around the world can not handle criticism of them or those they deign to protect.

By the way, look for Jon Stewart or Keith Olberman to start bagging on Lech Wałesa sooner than later.

On the one hand, Speaking of Faith is one of my favorite programs on Public Radio.  Their current episode, discussing the relationship between Charles Darwin and faith, is particularly good – exploring a conflict between reason and faith that (to the chagrin of atheism-pimps like PZ Meyers and Richard Dawkins) needn’t exist at all.  Leaving aside the overarching moral objection to government-supported media (to the extent that public radio is government-subsidized – neither total nor trifling), it is the kind of program you can not find anywhere on the commercial media, and yet is something I’d hate to do without.

That’d be “Sublime”.

On the “Ridiculous” side, we have SoF‘s online-only production, “Repossessing Virtue”, a series of podcasts ostensibly about the spiritual aspects of the current economic crisis.  They don’t seem to involve Tippett, but rather other parts of the shows cossack-horde-like herd of producers, who…

…well, that’s the interesting part, isn’t it? What do they do?  Mostly interview people whose contribution seems to be to wax sanctimonious about how fat ‘n happy American are.  And while any good conservative would agree, the whole series seems to serve more as a catalog of Public Radio cliches than an entree to any sort of interesting discussion.

It’s also one more set of lines on my podcast list to skip past.

Barack Obama’s election hasn’t eased the fever dreams of his most deranged supporters.

Grace Kelly, 9/11 Truther, writing at “The Heartbreak of Spirochaetal Paresis” “Minnesota Progressive Project”, took a moment to publicize a black hole of vacuity.

Oops – I missed it.  Bummer:

Sometimes truth can only be found by looking at history. This Sunday the Critical Thinking Club, St. Paul Chapter, is looking at 9/11. Everyone is invited and the cost is $3 or $10. Here are the details:

Location: Kelly Inn, Rice Street and I-94

Date: February 8, 2009

Gosh.  Go to church and have a day, or spend a gorgeous morning stuck in a room with a bunch of – I normally hesitate to talk this way on this blog, trying as I do to maintain a modicum of comity and respect – gabbling idiots who are drooling over their BDS-spawned fever dreams?

A time for choosing indeed.

“Grace” babbles onward:

Now those of you who still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that we were not lied into the Iraq war. you are probably not emotionally ready to consider that many elements of 9/11 are a lie. For me, it comes down to why the third building WTC 7 collapsed, as fast as a falling rock, very cleanly into its own footprint, when it had been hit by NO plane and had very little damage, especially compared to nearby buildings? For those who like mysteries and mind puzzles, this is one of the best. If you have never questioned what happened at 911, you might start here or do your own research.

Or just do like Kelly does, and mindlessly drone on and on like a hypnotized chimpanzee about the twaddle she’s gotten from her fellow deranged simpletons.

She’s been corrected before, of course, several times.  You be the judge.

The real tragedy?  Her vote counts the same as yours.

Spend the next 22 months remembering that.

When the subject of the “Fairness” Doctrine comes up, Democrats respond “Obama’s said he won’t for it”.  It’s both correct and irrelevant; Obama doesn’t need to do a thing; the cynical among us believe he knows that full well, and that he’s got henchpeople to do that hyperpartisan, not-so-hopey-changey work for him.

And they are doing it:

Another Democratic U.S. senator has gone on record as supporting the reinstatement of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” adding, “I feel like that’s gonna happen.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., told radio host and WND columnist Bill Press yesterday when asked about whether it was time to bring back the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”: “I think it’s absolutely time to pass a standard. Now, whether it’s called the Fairness Standard, whether it’s called something else – I absolutely think it’s time to be bringing accountability to the airwaves. I mean, our new president has talked rightly about accountability and transparency. You know, that we all have to step up and be responsible. And, I think in this case, there needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.”

Did you catch that?

We need “Accountability” and “Standards” for free speech?

Can you imagine if, at any point in the past eight years, any Republican had suggested we needed “standards” for any First Amendment liberty?  He’d have been tarred and feathered…no, he or she’d have been pilloried in the media, and quietly shuffled off the stage.

Of course, no Republican suggested doing any such thing to the civil rights of Americans in the past eight years.

Asked by Press if she could be counted on to push for hearings in the Senate this year “to bring these (radio station) owners in and hold them accountable,” Stabenow replied: “I have already had some discussions with colleagues and, you know, I feel like that’s gonna happen. Yep.”

I have felt that the Democrats were going to use Obama’s anointment and coronation as an excuse for overreach; in their decades on the intellectual margin, they have become brittle, shrill, dogmatic…

…and I guess, given these proposals, “authoritarian”:

“For many, many years, we operated under a Fairness Doctrine in this country,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., told Albuquerque radio station KKOB last year. “I think the country was well-served. I think the public discussion was at a higher level and more intelligent in those days than it has become since.”

It was not.  It was dreary, monochrome, and nobody cared, because nobody listened to it.

And yes – behind the shaking heads and the solemn assurances, the Dems have been lining up behind the proposals.

And, lest we forget, the Dems don’t need Obama, or Congress, or the title “The Fairness Doctrine” to ram this piece of garbage through:

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Bush appointee whose term runs through June, however, warned that Democrats may be adopting a stealthier approach to shutting down conservatives on talk radio.

In a speech to the Media Institute in Washington last week, Multichannel News reports, McDowell suggested there are efforts to implement the controversial policy without using the red-flagged “Fairness Doctrine” label.

“That’s just Marketing 101,” McDowell explained. “If your brand is controversial, make it a new brand.”

Instead, McDowell alleged, Democrats will try to disguise their efforts in the name of localism, diversity or network neutrality.

McDowell further suggested that the FCC may already be gearing up to enforce the “Fairness Doctrine” through community advisory boards that help determine local programming. While radio stations use the boards on a voluntary basis now, McDowell warned if the advisory panels become mandatory, “Would not such a policy be akin to a re-imposition of the Doctrine, albeit under a different name and sales pitch?”

I warned you about this months ago. The Dems have been preparing the ground for this fight for quite some time.

And while Republicans’ prediction of “Fairness Doctrine” legislation remains unfulfilled and highly speculative, a WND investigation has revealed that McDowell and Walden aren’t just fear-mongering, as some have suggested. A think tank headed by John Podesta, co-chairman of Obama’s transition team, mapped out a strategy in 2007 for clamping down on talk radio using language that has since been parroted by both the Obama campaign and the new administration’s White House website.

In June of 2007, Podesta’s Center for American Progress released a report titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” detailing the conservative viewpoint’s dominance on the airwaves and proposing steps for leveling the playing field.

I worked this report over when it came out. Please read that piece – it’s one of the better pieces I’ve written.

To borrow a phrase from Reagan, we do have a time for choosing, here.  After eight years of whinging endlessly about Americans’ civil liberties that were never in the faintest shred of danger, we now face a genuine threat to the First Amendment, intended purely to stifle debate in this country.

Part of me hopes the Democrats try.  They’ve overreached badly in Obama’s first two weeks; this would be the mother lode.
(Coming soon – Fairness Doctrine FAQ)

The “Brady Campaign” is mad at Minnesota:

Minnesota has weak gun control laws, says a national group.

Let’s stop there.  The link is to a piece by Joe Kimball at the MinnPost.  Kimball has a track record as a decent reporter, to be fair.

But he calls Brady a “national group”.  Now, I don’t expect Joe Kimball, employed as he is by a “progressive” agenda-news outlet, to call Brady “a group whose numbers, “research” and claims have been roundly debunked at nearly every turn for the past 25 years”, which would be true, albeit highly perspective-based. 

But Kimball can’t even call Brady “a national gun-control advocacy group”,  – which would be honest, non-partisan and factual.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence says Minnesota’s laws “help feed the the illegal gun market, allow the sale of guns without background checks and put children at risk.”

The group gives Minnesota only 11 points out of 100 in a checklist of laws. That ties us for 23rd among the 50 states.

In other words, “failing” is the mainstream! 

We do get passing grades on holding gun owners accountable for leaving guns accessible to kids and for giving cities authority to hold gun makers legally liable.

We also have a waiting period on gun sales, limitations on “junk” handguns — Saturday night specials — but on many other possible laws, like a ban on assault weapons and limitations on large-capacity ammunition magazines, we don’t fit their bill.

Because Minnesota, like most states, realizes that none of them make any difference in public safety (and bans on “Saturday Night Specials” merely make guns unaffordable for poor people, usually in crappy neighborhoods). 

The real question isn’t that Brady is lying and misrepresenting fact – that’s been their stock in trade for a generation. 

The real question is, why can’t the local lefty “alternative” media report on this issue any more clearly and honestly than the bigs?

I don’t follow talk radio around the country quite as much as I used to; it’s not like I’m about to go move across the country to take a talk show gig or anything.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, when I still followed talk radio obsessively – almost like I was trying to make it a career or something – I’d have known that a DC-area station had christened itself “Obama 1260”.  The station was a liberal talk operation, featuring the likes of Bill Press, Stephanie Miller and Fast Eddie Schultz.

I said “was”:

President Obama may be riding high in Washington, but OBAMA 1260 is not.

The area’s only progressive talk station is changing formats…The move by Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who purchased the station, WWRC, and others in Washington last summer, leaves the city without a liberal radio outlet. Program Director Greg Tantum says he thought the station could work because of enthusiasm over Obama, but that ratings collapsed to a level that could not be measured after the election.

“Of course, it’s because all talk radio is tanking”, you might hear someone say.

Er, no:

But ratings nearly doubled, he says, at Snyder’s conservative station, WTNT, which features Laura Ingraham and Bill Bennett. Tantum said he will move Schultz to WTNT to give him another shot.

Which isn’t so much a nod to the efficacy of liberal talk radio as to the fact that Schultz – dumb as a bag of hammers as he is notwithstanding – understands the basics of making a talk show entertaining, unlike just about every other liberal host in the nation.

This brings up an interesting question, though; one of the purported justifications for the “Fairness” Doctrine is to make sure there’s “competition” between ideologies, and a variety of them, on the airwaves. And yet in Washington DC – the ultimate “buyer’s market” for political talk, and a place with the most favorable demographics for liberal talk anywhere this side of Berkeley, and in a perfectly free market, let me repeat, “ratings collapsed to a level that could not be measured”.

The pattern holds true everywhere. After a poor start, Air America is barely clinging to existence.  Locally, AM950 – after making a play of it for a few ratings books back in 2006 – is well behind AM1280 in ratings, even though it has a vastly more powerful signal than The Patriot (disclosure for those who are new to this blog; I do a show on the weekends at AM1280) and revenue (where it’s not even close).
How exaggerated were rumors of conservative talk’s death?  Leaving aside Rush Limbaugh’s titanic eight year contract, conservative talk is the only format in radio that’s even making a pretense of holding its numbers and revenues during the current recession.

Locally?   Of the six commercial talk stations in the Twin Cities (WCCO, KSTP-AM, KTLK-FM, Chicktalk 107, Air America Minnesota 950 and the Patriot), the Patriot has by far the weakest signal – and yet the Patriot crushes AM950 in all time slots. On the vitally-important Saturday time slot, the Northern Alliance is not only demolishing AM950, but from 1-3PM is even beating KSTP and WCCO, to say nothing of KTLK and 107.

Conservative talk is not only alive; it’s moving silently through the woods and taking aim at the left’s packed masses of rhetorical redcoats marching in step down the road…

Damn, this is fun!

At any rate, best of luck to all you Obama 1260 people.  You might wanna think about leaving the ideology at home, swallowing your pride, and looking for a gig in a format that can survive…

(Via Ed)

President of The Onion leaving:

The Onion, the humor newspaper and online mecca for satire lovers, is losing its president. “It’s been a great run, but the time has come for a new challenge,” Sean Mills told partners in an email message. Mills tells minonline he had been negotiating a departure from the company for a while, but did not offer any further explanation for the move. He says that he started at the brand in 2002, when there was a staff of 35, print distribution in four cities and 2 million unique visitors to the Web site each month. “Today we have newspapers in 10 cities, 8 million readers online and 150 employees, as well as a video network that gets over 2 million views each week,” he said in a statement. In fact, next week Onion launches another Web video program, the Onion Sports Network.

To bad one of those “new challenges” isn’t making The Onion funnier.  It’s been pretty feeble lately.

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci at KAR despatches the latest leftyblog blood libel group seizure – in this case, last week’s Eva-Young-like outburst on MNPublius over Norm Coleman’s recount site crashing:

Landry’s lying (or, alternatively he’s just another dumbass political hack) (or both, actually). Here’s why:

Crashing tends to happen to websites not designed to handle 100,000 visitors at once, when Drudge sends 100,000 visitors at them.

Aaron Landry: lying liar telling lies. Liar.

And when one leftyblog writes something?  They all do, natch:

UPDATE: Well of course SorosNet would copy and paste the Franken version of the story without asking questions. That’s what they get paid for. Because, you know, crashing has never ever happened to a website before now.

Leftyblogs:  Distrust but verify.  And then distrust some more.

Because heaven only knows what’d happen if mainstream media didn’t have layers of oversight.

{Shudder}

In the realm of politics, favorably comparing Barack Obama to Ronald Reagan is like comparing God to Satan.

But NPR done gone and done it any way.

The rise of Barack Obama and the historic challenges facing his presidency have prompted comparisons to past presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But in these very early days, there are also parallels to be drawn between Obama and a more recent occupant of the Oval Office: Ronald Reagan.

…actually Jimmy Carter comes more to mind for those of us that actually understand basic economics.

That’s not to say that there aren’t elements that Obama and Reagan have in common.For instance, they both wear neckties around their necks.

While both Presidents inherited trying economic times to say the least, it is abundantly clear that they have polar opposite remedies in mind.

It’s clear that Obama and Reagan are very different ideologically, Obama being a Democrat on the liberal side and Reagan a Republican and an iconic conservative.

One accurately saw government as the cause, not the solution and acted accordingly.

Leave it to NPR to compare these two statements and find similarity:

Most people who remember Reagan’s speech remember him saying government is not the solution. But Edwards recalls that Reagan also said this: “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it.”

Compare that to Obama’s inaugural address, in which he said the question is not whether the government is too big or too small, “but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account.”

Barack Obama, despite empty rhetoric to the contrary (watch what he does folks, not what he says), sees government as the solution, despite it being the cause.

Despite the fact that government stimulus programs don’t work (because they weren’t big enough?!) and despite TARP monies actually freezing credit even further, Obama proposes nearly a trillion dollars of government spending including money for the arts, and sod for the mall, among other disgustingly obvious liberal pet projects.

All in the face of the fact that Reagan’s actions set forth the largest and longest run of economic growth and prosperity in American history.

A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from others’.

Obama and his book-learned elite cronies put our futures in great peril by electing to consider what Reagan did and do the opposite.

And why not? Look where it got us…and Jimmy Carter.

[former Rep. Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma] is one of a number of prominent Republicans who say they voted for Obama. The list includes several of Reagan’s top advisers, such as Gen. Colin Powell and former Reagan Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein. Edwards goes so far as to wonder whether the former president himself, if he were still alive, might have thought about voting Democratic in 2008.

Not a chance.

Republicans of today couldn’t touch the garment of Ronald Reagan. Prominent conservatives that voted for Obama, the slim and now meaningless minority that they represent, did so for a lack of top-down conservative leadership on the part of the Republican party. Some even did so to send a message to the party.

Ronald Reagan was a man of action and leadership. Action that gave gravity to his words. Leadership borne in true change in our government, not Obama’s brand of more of the same sold as Change^©.

Barack Obama is a man of words; a lack of corresponding action and experience rendering his words even more useless to all but those Americans deliberately marginalized by he and his ilk.

Why does the left hate Limbaugh so much?

It’s not just that he eats their lunch in the marketplace (markets have no meaning to the left); it’s not that he “dumbs down” the American people (a Pew study last year showed that…:

…Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners.

So intelligence doesn’t matter to them either.

No.  It’s because Limbaugh is the one nationally-prominent ideological conservative who is unapologetic on the subject,and has the capability of leading people – as opposed to the party – back to where it belongs.

Todd Huston notices just how wrong that is:

I am through with Limbaugh’s supporting the long tradition of rugged American individualism, done with his harping on free trade, and up to here with his going on about the Founders and our American character. I am worn out with his bellicose talk of stopping terrorism, and so done with Limbaugh’s high profile as one of the most listened to conservative advocates in the country that I could just spit. I simply don’t want this Limbaugh character to be the sole voice of the GOP. Stop it now. Make it go away.Instead, it would be nice if just ONE of our actual, purported Republican politicians would be the voice of the GOP espousing all the conservative ideals that Limbaugh so eloquently expounds upon day in and day out. Wouldn’t it be grand if just one guy with the guts to back up the rhetoric with a voting record would become the voice of the party of conservatism?

Liberals have their Ted Kennedys and Nancy Pelosis that do no compromising. They have their “Baghdad” Jim McDermotts that cavort across the globe advocating for murderers and tyrants the world over. They’ve had their presidential candidates “reporting for duty” that have in the past been key members of committees advocating for putting our own soldiers in jail and indicting Americans for faux war crimes. For that matter, the left even has an actual ex-president that runs to the support of every tin-pot dictator in the world pretending at being a diplomat.

The left is unapologetic for its support of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, the biggest mass murderers in history. They are resolved to turn our foreign policy over to foreign bodies like the UN. The left is four square against freedom of religion and keen to remove uncounted numbers of our Constitutional rights from us. They hate capitalism, property rights and are against open debate in our schools… yet they say so proudly and their politicians cultivate voting records that reflect those beliefs.

There’s no “compromise” there. The left knows that politics ain’t beanball.

The Obama Administration is just like Lori Sturdevant; they want their Republicans to be nice and wishy-washy and pliable.

They want a party full of Chuck Hegels and Ron Erhards – worthless “moderate” vermin (politically speaking) who are of no use to dissenting from the majority agenda.
I figured before the election that Obama would overreach on things like the “Fairness” Doctrine, measures to silence opposition.

In my wildest dreams, I didn’t think he’d do it this fast.

I hope he continues.  He’s clearly been reading his own press; he thinks he’s invincible; that he can get away with anything.
Good.

Strap yourselves in, Republicans across America.  You’ll get to live life the way we lived it here in Minnesota for decades; liberal supermajorities who believe your earnings belong to government first and foremost, backed by a media establishment that portrays dissent as one degree of depravity or another.  Oh, and about the portrayal of Republicans – remember how for the past eight years Chuck Hagel got more mic time than the rest of the GOP caucus put together?  Two words for ya; Lori Sturdevant.
Worse?  The alternatives that the opposition provides will disappear down the memory hole – or at least they will as far as the mainstream media is concerned.

Of course, we have an alternative media now (until Congress or the Administration sneak the “Fairness” Doctrine back in the door).  And the truth will be there somewhere.

Last Saturday, I talked with Michele Bachmann’s New Media director Dave Dziok.  He’s behind a new project – The Majority Tracker, which aims to drop a videocam down the memory hole.

What is the GOP doing?  Well, you’ll find out there.

I usually try to keep my criticisms of lefties, and leftism, substantive and fact-based.

Being human, I occasionally resort to sarcasm, humor and snark.  And you know it’s part of the reason you come here, so don’t try and get cute about it.

Sometimes, the best I can manage is a point-by-point fisking.

But in almost seven years of blogging, this is the first time I’ve had to sit back, scratch my eyes, re-read something, and decide that simply presenting the offending material in its full, dim, foul glory is all the criticism that material needs.

And so I present Grace Kelly – local 9/11 Truther and cog in the local DFL machine.  Her particularly wide-eyed, fabulist brand of jackboot-with-a-smile liberalism has turned up on this blog a few times in the past.

But she’s outdone herself this time.  She has summed up the collective id of the Democrat base in this country, in much the same way Rain Man summed up the cards in the casino, and presented it to the world in the form of a poem.

Lead Us President Barack Obama

At a time of darkness, the light appears
– that light is President Barack Obama.

At a time when knowledge, skill and science was disdained, a champion of knowledge, skill and science has stepped forward
– that champion is President Barack Obama.

At a time when it seemed that only corporations and the rich were represented, a representative of people appeared
– that representative is President Barack Obama.

At a time of torture, a leader of morality appears
– that leader is President Barack Obama.

At a time when the world no longer respects us as country, a reason for respect appears
– that reason is President Barack Obama.

At a time of too many wars and too much violence, we look for the wisdom of peace and diplomacy,
– that wisdom is President Barack Obama.

At a time of great economic crisis, a president who leads comes,

lead us President Barack Obama, speak for us,
lay out your plan of action,

And we the people will say
YES. WE. CAN!

I’ve been staring at this for ten minutes.

Have at it, all.  I’ve got everything…and yet nothing.

UPDATE: An emailer sends:

At a time with no flushable toilets

a man invented such a toilet

And that man was Thomas Crapper

UPDATE 2: Another emailer:

At at time when freshness eluded us
a man made freshness attainable.
And that man was Irving Douchebag.

Keep ’em coming!

UPDATE 3: The hits keep coming

At a time when bands’ names were lame, and balloons were merely toys
A man came a long and fixed both.
And that man was Count Von Zeppelin.

More!  More!

Steve “Mister Furious” Perry, who spent many years as one of the Twin Cities’ better journalist while the editor of the City Pages, several months as a lone crank at The Daily Mole, and about a year editing a bald-faced propaganda mill at the Minnesoros “Independent”, has not only gigged up, but done it in some style, landing both at the MinnPost  and at Sarah Janecek’s Politics in Minnesota.

Congrats, Steve Perry. Let’s hope you can get back to form.
David Brauer reflects (dimes will get you dollars) the mainstream view among the Twin Cities’ landed punditry in this MinnPost bit that proves that Brauer is from Planet Dinkytown:

It’s great news on several fronts. Perry is a polemicist of the best sort, equally at home excoriating ideological Republicans and hypocritical Democrats.

I suppose when your perspective is from as far to the left as Brauer’s it’s possible to say that with a straight face.   And as I’ve noted probably more than any other Twin Cities pundit (certainly more than any on the right), Perry has had his moments; indeed, a 1994 City Pages piece on concealed carry (which, if memory serves, Perry wrote) was just about the first genuinely balanced look at the subject in the Twin Cities mainstream media.
But let’s quit blowing sunshine; Perry would never have gotten a job at a George Soros propaganda mill like the “Independent” if his record had been anywhere close to genuinely balanced from the point of view of someone closer to the mythical center than Brauer.
“But Mitch – how far is Brauer from that mythical center?”  Read on:

(Indeed, his willingness to do the latter is a big reason he separated from his last bosses at the harm-no-progressive Minnesota Independent.) With an ideological governor, a so-far-cautious DFL legislature and a gaping budget deficit, Perry’s insights have never been more timely.

Pawlenty is ideological?

Never mind…

Not to be underestimated is the entertainment factor. PIM publisher Sarah Janecek’s last pairing with a true lefty — her KTLK radio show with Brian Lambert — ended in Aykroyd-Curtin bickering that was epic and horrifying to watch.

The show was kind of a mess – I wrote about it a few years ago –  but not because of the ideologies involved; while Lambert makes Brauer and Perry look like Scoop Jackson and Sam Nunn, Janecek – a good friend of this blog and the NARN, by the way – is no hard-line conservative.  A great writer, a force of nature, one of Minnesota’s great political personalities, yes, but she’s no Ann Coulter (whom I’d pay to  hear co-hosting a show with, and flensing, Lambert).

Like matter and antimatter, this latest strong-willed combo could end up annihilating the universe, but would be a clickfest before the world explodes.

“Annihilating the universe?”  Wow – y’all are hard-up for ratings!

Have no fear; the online world is a lot more controllable than radio.

Anyway, best of luck to Sarah and Steve and the whole PIM crew.

Note to Twin Cities’ Leftybloggers:  Please, please try to get your facts straight when you want to try to noodle about with issues I genuinely care about.  You might get Haugenned.

Fair warning.

Liberal in the Land of Conservative writes:

HOLY CRAP, the Democratic leadership in Congress is pushing the Fairness Doctrine. Who are the magical creatures that can pass a doctrine without nary a bill in existence?

Dear LITLOC:  Congresspeople, thanks to the miracle of “voices”, the “First Amendment” and “the Media”, can say things outside the context of “bills”.  For example, they can tell a reporter “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”  That’d be Dick “Turban” Durbin.  Bear in mind, he said that without authoring a bill on the subject.

Yet.

And – just so’s you learn something, LITLOC – let’s be clear; Congress needn’t pass a single bill to reinstate the “Fairness” Doctrine.  If Obama puts three pro-Doctrine members on the FCC Board, the “Doctrine” can become fact again by executive fiat; no legislation will be needed, beyond confirmation hearings.  This, indeed, is the most dangerous scenario for supporters of free speech; Obama (and the smarter Dems) don’t want to pee on the third rail by legislating censorship – but how much political capital do you think Obama will burn getting in the way of an allied bureaucracy doing it for them?

Seriously, I thought Mitch Berg was supposed to be the smart one.

Among conservative bloggers?  No. I’m the cute one.

Compared to Twin Cities’ leftybloggers?  In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Do your homework, kids.  You’re gonna need to.

For the past couple of years, we’ve gone to the Minnesoros Monitor and “Independent” for shrill, frequently inaccurate, often risible lefty propaganda.

Fastidious fact-checking?  Naaah.

Now, as I’ve noted before, I’m not Catholic.  I’m a committed Protestant.

But when I see Paul “Not The Dumbest Writer The Mindy Has” Schmelzer writing a story with a hed like “Vatican body: Minnesota professor’s sin worse than genocide“, I figured it was “worth” a read (where “worth” equals “barely”, and “read” means “mining for fisking material”); emphasis added by me:

While Catholic bishops and priests can hear confessions about sins as severe as murder or genocide, the Vatican’s 830-year-old Apostolic Penitentiary is “reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious,” writes the UK’s Telegraph. In Rome this week, this secretive “tribunal of conscience” held a two-day panel to discuss what it does and how it works. Crimes so grave they can only be absolved by the pope include attempting to assassinate the pontiff, directly participating in (or funding) abortion or desecrating the Eucharist. The inclusion of that last sin seems to put University of Minnesota professor PZ Myers in a worse class of sinner, in the eyes of Catholics, than genocidal dictators. The Telegraph even mentions the atheist biology professor, who blogged about his desecration of a communion wafer last summer, although it’s not clear from the article whether his case was specifically discussed by the Apostolic Penitentiary:

So in other words, the headline creates a misleading impression that there’s a connection between Myers’ act of sophomoric vandalism and the Vatican’s discussion…

…but no matter.  It’s not unknown for “local” news sources to dig too hard for the local angle.

But here’s the real question – and I’m gonna need your help, especially were “you” are Catholics.  As when the Mindy tries to “report” about guns, economics, history, crime, money, or facts, their reporting about religion has always been not only one-sided, but usually wrong.  Schmelzer’s graf tickles my “stink test” sensor, but I don’t know why – because, again, I’m a Protestant.
So I’ll open this up for a group fisk by the assembled commentariat.   How does Schmelzer (or, one might reasonably presume, his overlords in DC) get this wrong?

As far as the mainstream media is concerned, there is one standard of ethics for Republicans…:

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Chavez to a post in his cabinet as Secretary of Labor. Chavez was soon forced out because it was alleged that she had employed an illegal immigrant 10 years earlier. Subsequent investigation uncovered that Chavez had not, in fact employed the woman in question, but had sheltered her and given her some emergency assistance because the woman was threatened with domestic abuse. The woman, Marta Mercado, is now a U.S. citizen.

…and another for Democrats:

Contrast the political uproar and media storm over Chavez’ nomination with the quiescent reaction of our electeds in the halls of Congress and our pals over at CNN and the New York Times regarding President-elect Obama’s nomination of Timothy Geithner to be the Secretary of the Treasury.

Geithner, you may recall, is the man who may soon be in charge of trillions of our tax dollars who thinks paying taxes is only for the little people. While working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2001 to 2004, Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes totaling more than $45,000 including interest. Interestingly, the IMF, an international entity, pays its employees’ taxes and even sends them a notice regarding the taxes owed.

“But it’s not really the same kind of thing!”

Well, yeah.  It’s actually more than the same:

Just to ram the point home that laws are meant for some and not for others, Geithner also employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper (“Haven’t we all?” the U.S. Senators conducting the confirmation hearing must be thinking to themselves.)

You might be saying to yourself “News flash, Berg; duh.  Of course there’s a double standard!”.  And you’d be right.

My real question:  under these circumstances – where the major media refuses to point out ethical lapses (to say nothing of double standards) on the part of the incoming administration, can you imagine them not trying to shut down talk radio and the blogs, the conservative alternative media that are the only people that ever really question Obama on anything?

Strib files for bankruptcy:

The filing comes less than two years after Avista Capital Partners, a private equity group, purchased the paper for $530 million.

It was widely expected after the paper missed multiple payments to its lenders. The Star Tribune in its filing lists assets of $493.2 million and liabilities of $661.1 million.

The news was first reported on the Star Tribune’s Web site and confirmed by publisher Chris Harte.

In a statement, Mr. Harte said, “We intend to use the Chapter 11 process to make this great Twin Cities institution stronger, leaner and more efficient.”

It could, at least in the short term, do just that.

In the longer run?  Hard to say.  More on Monday.

Speaking of the long run:  The newsroom union doesn’t think in it:

In response to the filing, the guild representing the paper’s newsroom employees issued a statement in which it criticized Avista for its management of the paper in the wake of a series of concessions by the union.

“It’s unfortunate that a New York-based private equity company has put the Twin Cities largest source of news and information at risk,” said Graydon Royce, co-chair of the Star Tribune unit of the guild.

Well, to be fair, even a Minneapolis-based family business would have had a tough time making a go of the Strib in this market.

So what can the Strib spin off to make money?:

1. Make it official:  Sell the Minnesota Poll to the Minnesoros “Independent”, forming an all-lefty-propaganda mill.
2. Spin off the sports section.
3. And Vita.Mn.
4. Sell tickets for the chance to pelt Chris Riemenschneider wtih rocks and garbage.

The Strib’s lawyers will no doubt appreciate more ideas; please submit below.

And let’s not indulge in too much schadenfreud:  there are quite a few good people at the Strib.  While the paper’s editorial fealty to the loony left – via Nick Coleman, Lori Sturdevant, the “Minnesota Poll” and a million puzzlingly-daft editorial stances – were a few extra barnacles on the anchor that sank the paper, I don’t wish unemployment on anyone.

Camille Paglia – no conservative, she – sums up the absurdity of Dem proposals to reinstate the “Fairness” Doctrine.

For starters,they just don’t “get” radio (emphasis sparingly added):

Radio is a populist medium where liberals come across as snide, superior scolds. One can instantly recognize a liberal caller to a conservative show by his or her catty, obnoxious tone. The leading talk radio hosts are personalities and entertainers with huge rhetorical energy and a bluff, engaging manner…The best hosts combine a welcoming master of ceremonies manner with a vaudevillian brashness. Liberal imitators haven’t made a dent on talk radio because they think it’s all about politics, when it isn’t. Top hosts are life questers and individualists who explore a wide range of thought and emotion and who skillfully work the mike like jazz vocalists.

I’ll cop to “Mick Jagger”.

Talk radio is a major genre of popular culture that deserves the protection accorded to other branches of the performing and fine arts. Liberals, who go all hushed and pious at Hays Code censorship in classic Hollywood, should lay off the lynch-mob mentality. Keep the feds out of radio!

The liberal response is “But President Obama isn’t pushing the Fairness Doctrine”.

I answer “he’s not President for five more days, and it doesn’t matter; the Democrat leadership in Congress is, and I doubt Obama would waste a veto to protect Conservative talk.

In any case, all of us who’ve spent decades fighting – and lately, winning – the battle for the Second Amendment can tell you; liberty takes eternal watchfulness.

So we watch.

Note, borne of years of blogging experience:  when leftybloggers start attributing conservatives’ actions to having “crushes”, just tune them out.

However, in this case…

A new video posted today shows more footage from the event, including evidence of what appears to be a Coulter crush on former Sen. Norm Coleman.

…I don’t think I ever tuned Chris Steller in in the first place.

Oh, yeah:

Franken, at one point gesturing as if his skull was exploding, asks, “What does that mean?! What does that mean?!”

I bet we’ll see a lot of that after Franken gets seated in the Senate.

One of the reasons I always liked being a solo blogger (until Johnny Roosh joined the staff last summer) was that miscommunications among contributors were pretty rare.

Of course, with bigger blogs, it’s not always quite so easy.

Over at True North, I comment on a flap between two of my favorite regional bloggers; my friend and NARN colleague (for the rest of the week, anyway) Michael Brodkorb, and Col. Joe Repya.  The flap grew into a few questions about how True North does business – partly with the prodding of some Twin Cities leftybloggers who, like addled kittens who see a shiny bit of foil, are trying to romp and cavort about the “story”.

I try to answer them.

…of telling the US it couldn’t win in Iraq, Time Magazine needed to MoveOn to something new.  Something as rife with change as the Obama administration.

Like telling Israel it can’t win.

The more things change, the more we hope.

To:  Jeff Fecke

From:  Mitch Berg

Re:  Apology

Jeff,

 Your appearance on Prager yesterday was not a real career highlight, let’s just say.

But while your premise started from a distortion, proceeded through a weak argument and, in the end, a disingenuous attempt to distance yourself from your own hours-old writing on the subject, your approach was at least not as puzzlingly silly as that of your guest-host, “Center for “Independent” Media” capo Robin “Rew” Marty…

I, too, think Dennis Prager has sex issues, but, unlike Fecke, I’m willing to say it’s likely because he’s really bad in bed.  See!  We can have lots of fun together.

…where “fun” equals really dim ad-homina. 

Wheeee!

Anyway, Jeff, I’m sorry. I  wrote too soon.

With the news of the Minnesoros “independent”‘s layoffs, it’s good to see that the “Center for Independent Media” is hiring…

…editors for the home office, to run all those “independent” news blogs:

TWI’s publisher, the non-profit Center for Independent Media is looking for two news editors to shape the editorial direction of a network of sites across the country. The jobs are based in Washington, in the same offices as TWI.Full job description and instructions on how to apply after the jump.

“Shape the editorial direction” of a bunch of sites all named “Independent”.

I’ll just let that rattle around the cranium for a bit.