Lori Sturdevant remains the DFL Party’s primary unpaid PR flak among the Twin Cities’ mainstream media (although Rachel Stassen-Berger at the PiPress is closing in fast). 

In yesterdays’ column, she pines for “Instant Runoff Voting” because – why else? – it would have put more DFLers in power:

Play the what-if game that’s the rage among Minnesotans who are sick of plurality-rule elections:

(…a subset of voters that includes poli-sci grad students, a few newspaper columnists, a couple of math majors who love to design “cool new systems for running society” in their spare time, and Twin Cities’ third-party members, who believe they’re everyone’s “second choice” for power.  Really – Ed.) 

What if last week’s plebiscite had been conducted under the vote-by-number system called instant-runoff voting?

For more on IRV, read here.  And I mean read carefully.  It’s  a system that only a math major could love or, for that matter, really understand.  I’ll leave the listing of IRV’s disadvantages to that piece, for now.

Here’s my opening bid:

•The Senate race might still be headed for a recount. But there’s a decent chance that it would be with DFLer Al Franken, not Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, in the leader’s spot.

[smug, self-serving speculation removed for brevity’s sake]

And how would the Senate race have changed in message, tone and maybe outcome if the voters’ second choices had mattered all along? Might the fight have been more about, say, health care, and less about old comedy sketches? (See how delightfully speculative this game can be?)

And the “Recount” would be done entirely by machine, centrally, at the Minnesota State Department, managed almost entirely by sorting algorhithms, far too complex for people – indeed, there’d be almost no way for actual humans to follow it.  Odd, really, considering that among IRV’s most ardent supporters are the same people who thought Diebold and the other electronic balloting operations were in the tank for the GOP (who’ve been curiously silent for the past two cycles). 

•U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann would not be headed back to Congress. The outspoken Republican culture warrior wound up at 46.4 percent on Tuesday. Every other vote cast in the north suburban Sixth District, I’ll venture, was an anti-Bachmann vote. 

I’ll venture that Lori Sturdevant was huffing paint when she wrote this piece.

No, I have just as much evidence as she does.

Seriously.  Was “every vote” cast for Jesse Ventura in 1998 an “Anti-Norm Coleman, Anti-Skip Humphrey” vote?  Of course not.  Many were “ignorant nutslap who think it’d be fun to vote for a wrestler” votes.  Many more were “Lower fees on my jet-ski” and “Hey, $1,000 back from the government!” votes.  Many many more were “I don’t care much about politics, but I saw Jesse Ventura’s ad, and it made me laugh” votes. 

In the Sixth?  I suspect (with every bit as much evidence as Sturdevant brings to the table) that the “Anti-Bachmann” votes were easily diluted by the “pox on both their houses” votes, the “Hey, a Norwegian last name” vote, and – rare as this might be – the tiny film of IP voters who realized that Bob Anderson who actually a fiscal conservative and former Republican. 

Note, by the way, her main reason for supporting IP so far (other than “pluralities make me sad”); it’ll get her pet candidates elected.  The ends, in Lori’s curious little world, do justify the means.

•Republican Erik Paulsen would still have the U.S. Rep.-elect title in the Third. My thinking: Paulsen is close to the 50 percent mark already, at 48.5 percent. My unscientific, skimpy sample of voters who opted for the IP’s David Dillon include a fair share who would have given their No. 2s to Paulsen.

So Paulsen benefits from real-life ambiguity, but every single person who voted for Bob Anderson was an “Anti-Bachmann” voters.  Such is the order of the world in that special little space we call “Lori Sturdevant’s mind”.   

•State Rep. Ron Erhardt of Edina would have been reelected. Instead, he was the second-place loser to Republican Rep.-elect Keith Downey in a city that Barack Obama carried with 55 percent of the vote.

Right.

Which is also in a state with a statistical tie for Senate, and where conservative Erik Paulsen won by eight points, both in Lori Sturdevant’s special little world and the real one!

How, you ask?

Don’t:

In third place in the District 41A contest, just 134 votes behind Erhardt, was DFLer Kevin Staunton. If Edina voters used IRV, would DFL voters have given their No. 2s to a small-government, socially conservative Republican, or to a maverick former Republican who was a prime mover of the big transportation bill in 2008? If second choices had been registered and counted, this one wouldn’t have been close.

Presuming, of course, that Lori Sturdevant – she of the selective ambiguity and constantly-shifting context in this district – is really that clairvoyant.

Three-way races have become the norm at the top of the ballot and are proliferating further down. Last week, the Edina legislative seat was won with 36.7 percent of the vote.

And as a result of which…what?

The earth opened and swallowed the city whole?

No?  The mayor, elected with a third-and-change of the vote, had to govern by compromise, as an executive with a plurality rather than a decisive mandate?

The horror!

Seriously – this would be the future of politics with IRV:  candidates elected with phony “majorities” (derived from obscure machinations carried out without the vaguest possibility of human scrutiny, without even a paper trail!), who exist in a political netherworld, not really certain they have a majority, but unsure of how far from majority they really are. 

 Every Minnesotan who thinks democracy should mean majority rule will be watching.

And every Minnesota who thinks that “a phony majority delivered by a voting system one degree of separation from a math-major parlor game is a way to run a government” should have their heads examine.

But not by Lori Sturdevant. 

UPDATE:  A commenter to the column asks: “What if we could instant run-off the worst columnist at the Strib?
We can dream”

The hard part would be actually ranking the “choices”.

On Saturday, King and I filled in for John, Chad and Brian on the second hour of NARN Volume I.  To kill the time with as little effort as possible, we did our “Top Ten” lists of best and worst things about having an Obama Administration. 

Because it beat doing show prep, that’s why.

Anyway, one of “best things” was “Conservatives make better underdogs”.  Another was “Maybe our ‘leadership’ will finally get the message” – but we’ll get back to that.

“Evil Conservative” over at TvM extrapolates on the thought:

My first feeling and it’s a surprising one both in how strong it is and that it’s lasting even until now – relief. Relief from the stress of following the election. Relief from defending George W. Bush all the time. Relief from defending Bill Frist when he wants to ban internet gambling. Relief from defending House and Senate Republicans when they get together to do something colossally stupid like, y’know, banning internet gambling!

For all of you on the “right” that tried to ignore all of us Forbes supporters back in 2000 – you may express your apologies, at least as re spending and economic issues, in the form of bottles of single-malt and/or good vodka.  Thanks.

The bottom-line: the pressure is off us at last. We have had some semblance of control of the federal government for 14 straight years. In that time, many Republicans have lost their way (Lott, Bush, Santorum), many have become embarrassingly corrupt (Foley, Abramoff, Stevens), and many are flat out hypocritical (Larry Craig, most who voted for socializing the banking system especially the No votes the 1^st time around who voted Yes the 2^nd time around when it was loaded with pork).

One last bit of relief that connects my points above about the past and my points below about the future. I’m relieved that our side is taking the correct steps to right the ship. We are not reacting like spoiled little babies like MoveOn and the nutroots in the DailyKos did in 2004.

Actually, I’m impressed by all three of the principals’ approaches to the transition, so far.  Bush is by all accounts being gracious about the transition (and seems unlikely to tolerate the vandalism and less-visible obstruction that his predecessor did eight years ago); McCain has done his best to quell the anger on the part of many of his supporters (although I’m looking forward to him dropping the hammer on some of his more petulant soon-to-be-ex staffers), and Obama has exercised his prerogative to be manganimous in victory.  All to the good. 

Suffice to say I’ll be particularly merciless to any rightybloggers that want to take the low road.  Don’t bother; its still too crowded with leftybloggers who’ve been squatting there for the past four years.

Onward:

There are no more targets on our backs. The media has to report on Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. They have no choice but to be negative to sell, re-state their expectations of The One that they have promoted for the last 18 months, and resist the backlash now that the meme of the media favoring Obama is accepted by at least half of the audience – many who are refusing to watch or buy.

Not so sanguine here.

Of course they have a choice.  The media soft-pedalled Bill Clinton’s transgressions years ago (remember, it took Matt Drudge to get Newsweek to stop sitting on the Lewinski scandal?), and I see no reason to believe they won’t try again.

Of course, the media scene has changed since 1998; blogs, talk radio and a phalanx of alternative media have broken the logjam of “gatekeepers” that so benefitted Clinton.

Prediction:  Congressional Democrats will try to institute the “Fairness” Doctrine; it’ll be a dumb, ugly overreach that starts people thinking “maybe these people are too powerful”.

From another Financial Advisor and close friend of mine “Casey R.”:

A few very important things occurred to me as I was watching predictable election results unfold last night.  An obvious fact remains based on the votes received by each candidate – we are still very much divided in this country, very evenly divided.

Obama won the majority vote and a delivered a corresponding “pounding” in what both parties recognize as a “quirky” electoral college.  Even though I was more comfortable with the experience of McCain, I understand and appreciate the rationale that lead so many to look to a motivational and charismatic man as an impetus for change.

I became very worried throughout the campaign as I learned more about Obama’s liberal voting history and limited efforts to vote outside his party. Democrats held McCain to the same standard and found that, although he did tackle non-partisan issues in Washington, he sided too often with a misguided President during his first term for their comfort.

Obama earned respect from me with his moment of candid humility last night.  It came with the admittance that for the nearly 50% of the country that didn’t vote for him, he needed to do his best to earn their support and confidence and he knew he couldn’t simply assume it.

(more…)

I’m not sure what to think of Senator “Chuckles” Schumer’s take on the return of the “Fairness” Doctrine. 

Three possibilities present themselves:

1. He’s an idiot.
2. He assumes his audience and constituency are idiots.
3. 1 and 2.

Read this and then you be the judge:

Asked if he is a supporter of telling radio stations what content they should have, Schumer used the fair and balanced line, claiming that critics of the Fairness Doctrine are being inconsistent. 

 

“The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”

There’s a vote for #1; if he thinks political speech is in the same weight class as pornography, he’s clearly been hanging out with Barney Frank and Al Franken too long.

In 2007, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a close ally of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told The Hill, “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.”

There’s a vote for #1 and #2:  Americans can hear dozens of sides to every story, 24/7.  There is no shortage of free speech in this country.

Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last year said, “I believe very strongly that the airwaves are public and people use these airwaves for profit. But there is a responsibility to see that both sides and not just one side of the big public questions of debate of the day are aired and are aired with some modicum of fairness.”

Another vote for both.  “Fairness” comes from having the ability to get your point out there.  Nothing prevents the left from being heard in (it’s absurd that I have to even mention this) the media. 

 

He also defended “card check” legislation [saying] “there has to be some counter” to the leverage businesses have, claiming “employers have every leg up on people who want to organize and that’s why union workers have gone down from about 25 percent to 6 percent [in the private sector].”

 

There’s a vote for #1, because nobody could be stupid enough to think that a private ballot benefits business any more than it harms unions.

So that’s four votes for “Schumer is an idiot”, and two for “He thinks everyone else is an idiot”. 

As long as Chuckles Schumer sits in office, no New Yorker has any reason to feel superior to any toothless, Klan-voting yokel from Alabama.

The Obama campaign eighty-sixes reporters from three newspapers that, coincidentally, bucked the messianic tide and endorsed McCain:

“It feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth,” quipped John Solomon, executive editor of the Times, which lost its seat after three years of travel with the candidate and just 72 hours after endorsing McCain.

That newspaper’s website this afternoon headlined a report that Obama spent nearly $700,000 in U.S. campaign donations just on staging and lights for that Berlin victory rally last summer and those 200,000 Germans who can’t vote over here. Gee, you could dress more than four Republican vice presidential candidates with that much money.

What’s not to like in that news for the Obama campaign?

The Dallas paper reported no evidence its plane departure was political. Think about it: Why would a political campaign take retribution on reporters for a decision made by their publication’s separate editorial boards? The publications, after all, pay their own way on the charters.

That would be a cheesy hardball — and quite possibly counterproductive — Chicago kind of thing for a frontrunner to do, especially one on a national unity ticket. A candidate’s organization would have to reflect an enormous ego and over-confidence to pull something like that.

Why, yes.  Yes, it would.

That, and a serious disrespect for other divergent points of view:

Next thing you know such a campaign might urge supporters to clog a radio station’s phone lines or e-mail boxes just because it gave air-time to an Obama critic.

And it’s certainly not the kind of hands-across-the-aisle, bipartisan change we need and/or can believe in a national capital that could use a large dose of both.

If the campaign reacts this poorly to criticism now (and remember, the reporters don’t make the endorsements – the papers’ editorial boards do), imagine the snit he’ll throw when Putin and Ahmadinejad take off the gloves…

Still, this even may be hugely important, and in ways far beyond the mere exposure of Obama’s brittleness and petulance.  He’s bitten the hand that’s fed him; the media is all about getting strokes from those in power; when those in power turn on them, perhaps the media will pull its’ collective head out.

Just a theory.

The Democrat playbook:  Project, project, project.

For example, to draw attention away from the ACORN voter registration scandal, find and relentlessly hammer on any GOP-leaning irregularity you can find.

To cover your own candidates’ wierd past assocations, harp for weeks on Todd Palin’s attendance at a couple of Alaska Independence Party meetings.

To block coverage of real violence, vandalism and intimidation of McCain volunteers and other Republicans, focus on a sad, sick girl in Pittsburgh and her hoax.

Your candidates are all millionaires who’ve never held real-world jobs and get their clothes from Brooks Brothers by the bale?  Burn days of news coverage on Sarah Palin’s tanning bed and RNC-supplied loaner wardrobe.

And for goodness sake, if your Veep candidate is a loose cannon who needs to be hidden from public view, call in your markers with the entertainment industry to carry out a noxiously-sexist, misogynistic campaign against Sarah Palin.

Duly noted, folks.

…had crashed into the green room at Orchestra Hall last night, it could have had a sweeping effect on Minnesota conservatism.

At one point, I was sitting with Senator Coleman, Governor Pawlenty, Representative Bachmann, candidates Erik Paulsen (who will be a guest on the NARN this weekend), Barb Davis-White and Ed Matthews, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager and James Lileks, talking about the campaign locally and nationwide.

Not sure if anyone from the Strib covered “Talk The Vote” – Salem Radio’s cavalcade of stars touring battleground states nationwide to whip up conservative support – but if they had, they’d have found plenty of conservative support, er, whipped up.  Bear in mind, the Patriot’s been pleasantly surprised by turnout at these events before; the “Patriot Picnic” in 2004 drew hundreds more than we’d planned on, and our fabled Final Debate Party in 2004 attracted 700 to the Minneapolis Hilton – not bad, considering we’d had 100 RSVPs and it was a night every bit as cold and miserable as last Sunday was. 

Bear in mind also that this even was announced perhaps ten days ago, to an audience that largely has businesses and jobs and families and responsibilities.  The Patriot’s promotions department had figured maybe we’d fill up the floor level seats.

We filled every seat in the place; the floor and all three tiers of balconies.  There were people standing in the halls and the lobby, the last I checked.  And the crowd?

No lack of energy there.  Sorry, Sorosphere; after weeks of declaring the election already won, it’s just not sinking in with all of us plumbers and hockey moms.  Suffice to say that even if Mac loses, 2010 is going to make 1994 look like a Camp Wellstone sing-along.

The speakers?  Look – there are not three people anywhere in talk radio that can work a friendly room like Hugh, Michael and Dennis.  Especially Prager; you’d never know it from his fairly laid-back radio show, but in front of a room, the guy is like a nuclear reactor with the regulator rods pulled out; he gets the crowd stoked, and as the crowd’s energy picks up, so does his; I’ve never seen him speak from any kind of notes at all, so the whole world is his speech, and eventually he covers the whole world, getting more and more animated as he goes, stopping just short of pounding his shoe on the lectern.  An amazing performance, even allowing for the tactical flub of attacking Sweden at a stop in Minneapolis.

Me?  I’m feeling a lot better about this next week, and the next two years. 

So why is the media so very, very in the bag for The One?

Theories, as they say, are like, um, toes.  Everyone has one.

But Michael Malone – a career journalist and columnist – has a theory of his own.

It’s the editors (managing editors, executive producers, etc), and it’s about self-preservation (I’ve added some emphasis):

Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you’ve spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power … only to discover that you’re presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn’t have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you’ll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe — and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway — all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself — an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it’s all for the good of the country …

Self-preservation has driven people do do stranger things…

Read the whole thing, by the way.

I’m shocked and saddened to see Dean Barnett has passed away, apparently due to complications from Cystic Fibrosis.  He was only 41.

A few years back, he wrote one of the better essays on Cystic Fibrosis – and his battle with the disease – that I’ve ever seen.  At the time, he’d just participated in a promising treatment:

But regardless, this treatment has given me time – time to spend with my wife and family and friends. Time to hit golf balls (usually sideways, but even that’s alright). Time to chase my dogs around the house. Time that frankly I didn’t expect to have. There could be no greater gift, and it’s a miracle in so many ways.

The miracle has its roots in my persistent father who got Joe O’Donnell involved in the fight against CF. It continues through the incredible courage shown by Joey O’Donnell, who fought CF with such bravery that he inspired his family to fight the disease long after Joey succumbed. And it finishes with Joe O’Donnell and the rest of the amazing O’Donnell family who have given so much of themselves in so many ways and to such great effect.

There are indeed heroes out there. And miracles, too.

His many friends and admirers are a living memorial, of course – one of the greatest legacies someone can leave. 

Words fail, other than to say Dean’s wit, courage and grace were inspirations.  Please pray for the Barnett family. 

The Strib endroses Norm Coleman for Senate…

…for all the wrong reasons (emphases added):

Independent judgment, exercised on behalf of the best interests of the country and state, is what we hope to see from our U.S. senators. With that hope in mind, this newspaper recommends the reelection of Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

The more independent, pragmatic Coleman emerged when he helped speed money to Minneapolis for a new Interstate 35W bridge; when he promoted tax credits for renewable energy investment; when he pushed for larger Pell Grants for needy college students; when he stood up to President Bush on extending publicly subsidized health insurance, including MinnesotaCare, to more poor children and their parents.

In other words, “we endorse Coleman over a plainly-unqualified Al Franken and vacuous irrelevancy Dean Barkley for reasons Lori Sturdevant would approve of”. 

Endorsements don’t carry that much weight; with reasoning like this one, it’s no wonder.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t support Coleman:  I do.  He’s clearly the best man for the job. 

Any port in a storm, I guess.

Check the bottom listing in the Investor’s Business Editorials Daily Tracking Poll…”Displays Flag”

HT John H

Here’s the question:  do I express surprise that John Stossel has pretty well documented the press’ in-the-bag-for-Obama-itude…

Fifty-seven percent of the print and broadcast stories about the Republican nominee were decidedly negative, the Project for Excellence in Journalism says in a report out today, while 14 percent were positive. The McCain campaign has repeatedly complained that the mainstream media are biased toward the senator from Illinois.

Obama’s coverage was more balanced during the six-week period from Sept. 8 through last Thursday, with 36 percent of the stories clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative.

McCain has struggled during this period and slipped in the polls, which is one of the reasons for the more negative assessments by the 48 news outlets studied by the Washington-based group. But the imbalance is striking nonetheless.

…or the fact that people might either be surprised by, or deny, the conclusion?

Oh, yeah – the report wasn’t actually by conservative John Stossel; it was by center-lefty Howard Kurtz.

We conservatives, concerned that a potential lefty supermajority will try to impose the “Fairness” Doctrine to destroy talk radio (the backbone and beating heart of American conservatism today), warn the nation that an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment rights of average Americans is imminent.

“No – what, us?  Noooooooo!” responds the left.  “Why, Barack has even said he won’t push to reinstate the Doctrine!”

To them – disingenuous or naive as the case my be – that closes the discussion.

Of course, it’s not closed. 

New Mexico liberal Senator Jeff Bingaman:

Nah.  Nothing to worry about.

Nahthing!

Look; it’s probably natural for lefties to expect that their elected representatives do have the Constitution’s, and the nation’s, best interests at heart.

It’s just that the documentary evidence doesn’t seem to bear this out in any way.

(Via Maloney)

I ask my liberal acquaintances if they’re aware that the Democrats plan to muzzle conservative opinion in this country, by reinstating the “Fairness” Doctrine.

Leave aside for a moment that most people of all political stripes have not the faintest clue how the “Fairness” Doctrine worked during its heyday (until Reagan repealed it in 1987), to say nothing of how it would work in the future; the current party line on the left is “Barack Obama doesn’t favor restoring the Fairness Doctrine!”.  I’ve heard it from no less than three different local lefties in the past 36 hours.

It’s true, sort of – in the same sense that “George Bush didn’t support McCain/Feingold”.  He didn’t.  Until Congress made it clear that they did, and he opted not to expend any political capital opposing it.

Because the threat isn’t Obama himself; it’s a Congressional Democrat caucus that’s already thoroughly committed to re-instating the Doctrine, combined with a President that, at best, is going to expend no political capital opposing a Democrat-controlled Congress on the issue.

Brian C. Anderson at the NYPost analyzes the reality:

SHOULD Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats take full control of Congress, next year will see a real legislative attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine – and to diminish conservatives’ influence on broadcast radio, the one medium they dominate.

Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn’t seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan’s FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats – including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore – strongly support the idea of mandating “fairness.”

Would a President Obama veto a new Fairness Doctrine if Congress enacted one? It’s doubtful.

The Democrats – and their RINOid supporters on the right, the thin film of Republicans who also support them on the Doctrine – paint a rosy picture to each other and the people about what a “Fairness” Doctrine means to free speech in this country.

Anderson has the ugly truth:

The Fairness Doctrine was an astonishingly bad idea. It’s a too-tempting power for government to abuse. When the doctrine was in effect, both Democratic and Republican administrations regularly used it to harass critics on radio and TV.

Most people have at least an idea – however vague and propaganda-driven – of the “what” of the Doctrine.  Few on either side know of the “how”:

Second, a new Fairness Doctrine would drive political talk radio off the dial. If a station ran a big-audience conservative program like, say, Laura Ingraham’s, it would also have to run a left-leaning alternative. But liberals don’t do well on talk radio, as the failure of Air America and indeed all other liberal efforts in the medium to date show. Stations would likely trim back conservative shows so as to avoid airing unsuccessful liberal ones.

Then there’s all the lawyers you’d have to hire to respond to the regulators measuring how much time you devoted to this topic or that. Too much risk and hassle, many radio executives would conclude. Why not switch formats to something less charged – like entertainment or sports coverage?

That, indeed, is exactly what talk radio was before 1987 (except at those very rare stations that could support political hosts on both sides of the aisle – and by “support”, I mean even putting a 25 year old kid on weekend graveyards to talk conservative politics); at all but the stations that could afford to commit to it, the subject was avoided. 

Anderson catches what is by far the most chilling facet of this story; the Orwellian hijacking of the language that the left will need to do to make this go down the American throat:

For those who dismiss this threat to freedom of the airwaves as unlikely, consider how the politics of “fairness” might play out with the public. A Rasmussen poll last summer found that fully 47 percent of respondents backed the idea of requiring radio and television stations to offer “equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary,” with 39 percent opposed.

Liberals, Rasmussen found, support a Fairness Doctrine by 54 percent to 26 percent, while Republicans and unaffiliated voters were more evenly divided. The language of “fairness” is seductive.

Who wouldn’t support being “Fair”, after all?

Of course, it’s ludicrous; there is  no shortage of left-leaning points of view in any medium, other than terrestrial radio (and the left has had ample chances to try to stake out a piece of that turf).  It dominates the print medium, broadcast TV, cable news (save Fox), public TV and radio…every medium save AM radio and the blogs.

Anderson notes, correctly, that the “Fairness” Doctrine is only one of the bureaucratic chicanes – albeit the marquee effort – the left is going to attempt:

[Obama] and most Democrats want to expand broadcasters’ public-interest duties. One such measure would be to impose greater “local accountability” on them – requiring stations to carry more local programming whether the public wants it or not.

And on the surface, this looks like a good thing – after all, my program is local.  Gotta be a good thing, right?

Well, not so much.  The public votes with its feet; and while everyone pays lip service to the benefit of local radio, the market still rewards quality – and for better or worse, the best quality is usually syndicated.   And that syndicated programming – everyone from Limbaugh on down – is rewarded with excellent numbers and tons of money. 

The left wants to kill this status quo with a thousand bureaucratic paper cuts:

 The reform would entail setting up community boards to make their demands known when station licenses come up for renewal. The measure is clearly aimed at national syndicators like Clear Channel that offer conservative shows. It’s a Fairness Doctrine by subterfuge.

Obama also wants to relicense stations every two years (not eight, as is the case now), so these monitors would be a constant worry for stations. Finally, the Democrats also want more minority-owned stations and plan to intervene in the radio marketplace to ensure that outcome.

Read the whole thing.  Become informed.  Because you never know when some mindless lefty parrot is going to greet the debate with “Obama opposes the Fairness Doctrine”, and assume that’s that.

MSN Money today, or at least two of their columnists, attributed the 413-point gain (4.6%) on the Dow today to Ben Bernanke’s endorsement of a potential Pelosi stimulus package.

The Democrats are also taking Bernanake’s words out of context to promote their “stimulus” plan, essentially a plan to further mortgage the future to generate welfare checks.

Stocks soared today as higher oil prices set off a big rally in energy stocks and as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke endorsed the idea of a second economic stimulus package from Congress.

This based on an out-of-context snippet of Bernanke testimony today…

“With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate”

“Consideration” is not an endorsement. Unless of course you are a liberal looking for corroboration of your failed economic policies.

Here are excerpts from the full transcript in context (emphasis mine):

I understand that the Congress is evaluating the desirability of a second fiscal package.  Any fiscal action inevitably involves tradeoffs, not only among current needs and objectives but also–because commitments of resources today can burden future generations and constrain future policy options–between the present and the future.  Such tradeoffs inevitably involve value judgments that can properly be made only by our elected officials.  Moreover, with the outlook exceptionally uncertain, the optimal timing, scale, and composition of any fiscal package are unclear.  All that being said, with the economy likely to be weak for several quarters, and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by the Congress at this juncture seems appropriate.

Should the Congress choose to undertake fiscal action, certain design principles may be helpful.  To best achieve its goals, any fiscal package should be structured so that its peak effects on aggregate spending and economic activity are felt when they are most needed, namely, during the period in which economic activity would otherwise be expected to be weak.  Any fiscal package should be well-targeted, in the sense of attempting to maximize the beneficial effects on spending and activity per dollar of increased federal expenditure or lost revenue; at the same time, it should go without saying that the Congress must be vigilant in ensuring that any allocated funds are used effectively and responsibly.  Any program should be designed, to the extent possible, to limit longer-term effects on the federal government’s structural budget deficit.

Finally, in the ideal case, a fiscal package would not only boost overall spending and economic activity but would also be aimed at redressing specific factors that have the potential to extend or deepen the economic slowdown.  As I discussed earlier, the extraordinary tightening in credit conditions has played a central role in the slowdown thus far and could be an important factor delaying the recovery.  If the Congress proceeds with a fiscal package, it should consider including measures to help improve access to credit by consumers, homebuyers, businesses, and other borrowers.  Such actions might be particularly effective at promoting economic growth and job creation.

He’s not ruling it out, but it’s not an endorsement of Liberal welfare stimulus checks. He warns of any plan’s detrimental impact on our future (read national debt), and seems more concerned with job growth (read tax cuts) and less so on putting cash in consumer’s hands (liberal stimulus packages).

…and yes, I am well aware of the fact that the last (also failed) stimulus package was pressed into service by a liberal by the name of George W. Bush.

So why did the last one fail? The same reason the next one will. The same reason Obama’s Marxist “spread the wealth around” policies will fail.

Because our economy is hyper-sensitized to job growth and job security. Right now small businesses are freezing new hires and new expenditures until they see who occupies the Oval Office, what happens in the credit markets, and what is in store for tax and fiscal policy.

As a result, consumers are deferring discretionary purchases; especially big-ticket items manufactured in America. Putting a few hundred dollars in their pockets won’t assuage the insecurity they feel about their jobs and cash flow for the foreseeable future.

Bernanke is convinced that the goverment needs to do something to loosen frozen credit markets and stimulate job growth. Hence the relevance of Joe the Plumber of late. Americans are realizing what a hero Joe and other small business owners are in times like these. They create jobs. Right now they need to be incented, not penalized for doing so.

Barack Obama’s policies play into the worst fears of those who hold in their power the ability to grow our economy. I suspect that has a lot to do with the tightening of the race for the White House.

Question is…is there still time enough for the American people to realize which of the two candidates is most likely to take actions, based on their records, that will address the challenges our economy faces?

PS: So why did the stock market go up today? Because there were more buyers than sellers.

In an un-linked sidebar to a Strib editorial full of platitudes about stomping out hate in the presidential campaign (which mentions the incidents involving a few overexcited people at the Lakeville rally last week, although nothing about the physical attacks, sexist defamation and economic threats  against Mac, Sarah and their supporters, and the media lynching of any who dare question The One, not that we expected the Strib to have an especially ecumenical definition of “hate”), the Strib runs this bit by “political media expert” Kathleen Hall Jamieson about Mac’s response in Lakeville:

 “The audience that expressed that needs to be told that’s not the way we campaign and treat the opposing candidate … McCain was slow to respond. He should be applauded for doing so, but he should have done it more quickly.”

“More quickly?”

Perhaps someone needs to do some metrics on the exact delay threshold between “treating the opponent well” and “condoning hatred”.  It’s not a picayune point, as anyone who’s had to “think on their feet” in front of a crowd can tell you.

Oh, yeah – the Strib didn’t see fit to tell anyone that Kathleen Hall Jamieson is “Policy Director” at the Annenberg Foundation.

Does that ring a bell with anyone?

A few weeks ago, Tracy Eberly wrote – with characteristic political incorrectness – a piece that capped off with the line “If you are biking to save the environment, keep it up and the law of averages says we’ll have a few less Obama voters in November.” 

Now, as usual on subjects where Tracy and I disagree, I’m right and Tracy’s wrong.  Not necessarily about most bikers supporting Obama – most of the lycra-and-Bianchi crowd does.  Oh, things like this…:

If you bike for your health, you’d better have a large life insurance policy as you’re risking your life.

…are worth a whack; waking up in the morning and doing anything but lying in bed involves “risking your life”.

But even though Tracy’s wrong, he’s still one of the good guys – and one of the fundamental tenets of being a good conservative is “argue amongst yourselves until your jaws fall off – but if the orcs intrude, close ranks“. 

Emily Kaiser at the City Pages – which seems to be on its way toward becoming an even less-credible operation than the Minnesoros “Independent” these days – took time off from her gruelling schedule of ignoring the thud-witted cloddish selective insensitivity of Twin Cities leftyblogs to huff and puff and write a piece in which she expressed the vapours over Eberly’s un-PC-itude.

And the usual lefty trolls came out in the comment section – most notably “Scottsdale Woman“, a risible “feminist” “blog” “writer” who threatened to sic both law-enforcement and hordes of angry bikers with both left-wing sympathies and handguns on drivers who vex bikers – simultaneously violating Minnesota self-defense law and confirming Wes Skoglund’s fears about armed citizens, albeit not the ones I’d suspect provoked his years-long fit of dissociation.  “She” also left a comment about Tracy’s place of employment – which, given the number of class acts among leftybloggers in this city, is tantamount to taping a “Stalk Me!” sign on his back.

A couple of us responded, to Kaiser and Scottsdale woman, in the comment section.

And while Scottsdale Woman and all of her wacko defamation remains, pristine and undisturbed, it’d seem that the City Pages’ moderators have chosen to remove all comments critical of Ms. Kaiser, her reporting, and of the depravity (and factual dim-bulbitude) of some of the commenters. 

Which is their right; it’s private property.

It’s also singularly gutless.

Which is kind of sad; City Pages used to put some courage behind their adenoidal shrieking.

MPR’s venerable “The Morning Show” is closing the studio doors for good:

MPR’s “The Morning Show,” a home for eclectic, acoustic music and gentle humor for 26 years, is about to go gently into the good night.

Hosts Dale Connelly and Jim Ed Poole (Tom Keith) announced Wednesday that the program will go off the air Dec. 11 with a live celebration at the Fitzgerald Theater, open to the public.

TMS was the kind of morning radio my mother would love if she lived in the Twin Cities.  Truth be told, in my 23 years here I’ve listened to the show perhaps enough times to count on one hand, and I’m pretty sure you’d get a finger or two in change, but it seemed like the kind of show where a couple of public radio guys (and their listeners, natch) could have a lot of good clean self-referential fun while their audience sprayed each other with self-righteousness (no, really.  Check out the comment section in the Strib piece.  Clouds of smug are descending).

But I digress.  Like most changes for the worse in radio, it’s the result of some manager’s bright idea:

Keith, who will continue to provide sound effects on “A Prairie Home Companion,” said the show was never really the same after it moved four years ago to the Current (89.3 FM), which leans toward alternative rock and a younger demographic.

“I didn’t care much for a lot of the music on the station,” said Keith, who turns 62 in December. “We tried to mix in some flavor of the rest of the Current lineup, but I didn’t know the names of a lot of the bands or singers.”

Connelly, 53, said he was willing to continue the program solo or with a new partner, but management told him last week that the show was going away. “I think they wanted a fresh start,” said Connelly, who will continue to work at MPR.

And by “fresh start”, I’ll betcha they meant “another show that’s oblivious to Delicious Dish“. 

But I do wish Jim Ed and Dale the best. 

I studied at the U of M’s School of Professional Journalism (“The J-School”) and even though it was not that long ago, industry practices appear to have changed a great deal since then (not to mention my career as a Financial Advisor having nothing to do with Journalism).

Lost is the notion that a journalist is a professional at least in the sense that a professional follows a creed; adheres to some standard of excellence; observes a code of ethics. Nowadays, objectivity is for sissies. Everything is an editorial.

Journalistic “talent” is more apt to refer to a Journalist’s visage or breast size than more cerebral aptitudes.

A reversal of sorts has emerged. Conclusions are crafted, research is conducted and the story is written to substantiate it. Political events are reverse engineered. Newspapers didn’t use have agendas…or at least were a lot better at concealing it.

And the printed journal is suffering for it.

This morning on Sirius 144 The Patriot I heard Bill Bennett read The Journalists Creed.

The Journalist’s Creed was written by the first dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, Walter Williams. One century later, his declaration remains one of the clearest statements of the principles, values and standards of journalists throughout the world. The plaque bearing the creed is located on the main stairway to the second floor of Neff Hall.

It is engraved in bronze; surviving now only in spirit. The bronze’s worth now measured by its weight – not the import it conveys.

They were heady days…when a journalist could be counted on for the facts. Nothing more/nothing less. News was news. Opinion was relegated to the Editorial Page.

Great reward found the investigative reporter that uncovered a truth unknown but of great weight; and it was never served until it was corroborated; confirmed. If anything, the press showed too much restraint in the interest of the greater good. JFK’s affairs weren’t in the news – it wasn’t good for America.

In the interest of The Republic, in-depth coverage and vetting could be expected to be conducted on both party’s candidate. Not just the one, usually a conservative, that the paper wasn’t endorsing – a bastardization of the institution in and of itself.

Case in point: More time and effort has been invested on the part of the media to determine the the maternity of Sarah Palin’s granddaughter than Barack Obama’s associations with admitted domestic terrorists, anti-American ideologues, or the prime instigators of our current financial crisis, Raines and Frank, both either allies or advisers to Barack Obama.

And the voter is suffering for it.

Newspapers have been dying a slow death for many years now. Soon the printed page will be a thing of the past.

As for the state of Journalism? The Blogosphere has emerged as an agent for change and frictionless expression. Objectivity, and even truth are left for the reader to discern and evaluate. Feedback and commentary is real time. The Blog is the modern day version of the pamphlet of Ben Franklin’s time; published with a nom de plume, not unlike the millions of blogs across the globe.

And objectivity in the blogosphere? It’s for sissies here as well.

As for the creed? Read it and weep.

I believe in the profession of journalism.

I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of a lesser service than the public service is betrayal of this trust.

I believe that clear thinking and clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.

I believe that a journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true.

I believe that suppression of the news, for any consideration other than the welfare of society, is indefensible.

I believe that no one should write as a journalist what he would not say as a gentleman; that bribery by one’s own pocketbook is as much to be avoided as bribery by the pocketbook of another; that individual responsibility may not be escaped by pleading another’s instructions or another’s dividends.

I believe that advertising, news and editorial columns should alike serve the best interests of readers; that a single standard of helpful truth and cleanness should prevail for all; that the supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its public service.

I believe that the journalism which succeeds best — and best deserves success — fears God and honors Man; is stoutly independent, unmoved by pride of opinion or greed of power, constructive, tolerant but never careless, self-controlled, patient, always respectful of its readers but always unafraid, is quickly indignant at injustice; is unswayed by the appeal of privilege or the clamor of the mob; seeks to give every man a chance and, as far as law and honest wage and recognition of human brotherhood can make it so, an equal chance; is profoundly patriotic while sincerely promoting international good will and cementing world-comradeship; is a journalism of humanity, of and for today’s world.

Those were heady days.

Flash:

 Conservatives heads exploded simultaneously at the announcement of political gadfly Paul Krugman’s Nobel

Nah.  Head is firmly in place.  Being a conservative, I look at issues on their merits, using actual data and facts.

King, who has a vocational reason to remember Nobel Economics Prize trivia, has the inside poop:

If you’ve read here before, you know that I think Paul Krugman is an excellent economist … and a lousy political observer…They indicate that “netting out” bad research is not part of the process, so all the things we might disagree with Krugman about are not part of the record the Nobel Committee looked at…

…His prize is rather obviously…”for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.”  This is a single analysis.  Basically, before Krugman trade theory was simply a matter of factor endowments.  To take an example I use in class, in the old trade theory we had manhole covers made in India and in Michigan.  India had cheap labor, so focused on making them using a technology that used lots of labor.  In Michigan capital was comparatively cheaper, so the covers were made in a more automated process that minimized labor.  Trade patterns were based on who had more labor or more capital, more land and natural resources, etc.  Krugman changed all that.  Some people have tried to say it’s both trade and economic geography, but I read both as coming out of a single research agenda, one of many he’s had.

Krugman is an example of someone who is perfectly capable – indeed, brilliant – in his actual field; he’s also an example of how excellence doesn’t always translate between fields. 

Sort of like how “being on the Harvard Law Review” doesn’t necessarily mean “great leader”.

Congrats, Krugs (as all of us pals of his call him).  Someday, we’ll teach you how to write a coherently-reasoned column.

NRO’s Kevin Williamson notes that independents think the media has been unfair to Governor Palin (emphases added):

Strong majorities of the public say the press has been fair to John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But fewer than four-in-ten (38%) say the press has been fair to Sarah Palin. Many more believe the press has been too tough on Palin (38%) than say it has been too easy (21%).

While opinions about Palin coverage are highly partisan, many independents share the view that the press has been too tough on the Alaska governor. Among independents, 41% say the press has been too hard on Palin, 20% say the press has been too easy and 36% say the press has been fair. Republicans overwhelmingly believe the press has been too hard on Palin (63%). Just 7% say the press has been too easy on her. Nearly one-in-five Democrats (18%) agree that coverage of Palin has been too tough.

Williamson reprises a question I asked in the past week or so: 

This brings up a question: Why do conservatives still feel the need to go through the dinosaur media? If you really want to talk ideas and policy, Rush Limbaugh’s show is probably the best forum, if you can get on. Rush doesn’t have a lot of guests, but when he does he gives them a chance to actually articulate their ideas in a developed way. If you’re looking for a place where substantive conservative ideas can get a hearing, there’s talk radio, the better blogs, Glenn Beck, NR/NRO, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, &c. It’s not so much that these outlets are conservative-friendly, but that they’re interested in ideas. The Wall Street Journal is not going to ask a lot of “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” questions, or game-show inquiries about the deputy fisheries minister of Hoogivsastan. Treating the fossil media as though they were still the only — or the main — game in town only serves to prop them up and to diminish conservatives’ ability to get a hearing for our ideas.

It would be much more interesting to hear Governor Palin spend an hour with Glenn Reynolds than with Katie Couric.

And the Northern Alliance (Volume II, the Headliners) is certainly a contender, too.

As Williamson notes, it’s time for conservatives to start playing to the few media strengths we have.

If I have one strength in life, it’s that I’ve done my best to keep myself mobile as far as career options go.  I’m on my third career (fourth if you count my time as a nightclub DJ, and I certainly don’t), and I’ve done my best, so far, to try to make and keep myself as marketable as possible, and to try to rely on me, rather than a job or union or company, to ensure my viability.

In hard times, there are no guarantees; even being adaptible and light on your feet aren’t going to pay the mortgage if things come to a crashing halt.  But every little bit helps, as they say. 

Of course, the news media – especially traditional “journalism” – have been depressing rapidly for quite some time, now.   

Jeff Jarvis, himself a J-School faculty member, judges the journalism biz, finds them wanting, and they’ve brought it on themselves.

The fall of journalism is, indeed, journalists’ fault.

It is our fault that we did not see the change coming soon enough and ready our craft for the transition. It is our fault that we did not see and exploit — hell, we resisted — all the opportunities new media and new relationships with the public presented. It is our fault that we did not give adequate stewardship to journalism and left the business to the business people. It is our fault that we lost readers and squandered trust. It is our fault that we sat back and expected to be supported in the manner to which we had become accustomed by some unknown princely patron. Responsibility and blame are indeed ours.

[The WaPo’s Paul] Farhi’s rationalization on behalf of his fellow journalists makes many bad assumptions and blind turns and Greenslade only follows him down those alleys, piping in with (my emphases follow) an “unhesitating answer” of no to accusations of journalistic guilt. “There cannot be any doubt that journalists themselves … cannot be held responsible for either the financial woes of the industry nor for the public turning its back on the ‘products’ that contain their work.” He piles on: “They are blameless.” They have “no reason to feel guilty…. It isn’t our fault…. The truth is that we are being assailed by revolutionary technological forces completely outside of our control…. We journalists are not [his emphasis] paying the price for our own (alleged) failures…. you are not the cause of the current calamity.”

The hack doth protest too much.

The old model – journalists as high priests of knowledge, passing information down the hierarchy to the unwashed masses – has been dying for a decade.  Drudge put the bullet in the gun; Powerline pulled the trigger four years ago. 

And yet the people in the newsrooms still cling to that old model:

The internet does not just present a few glittery toys. It presents the circumstances to change our relationship with the public, to work collaboratively in networks, to find new efficiencies thanks to the link, to rethink how we cover and present news. No, the essence of the problem is that we thought the internet represented just a new gadget and not a fundamental change in society, the economy, and thus journalism.

By maintaining the newspaper and its newsroom as essentially static entities, Farhi also makes the common and dangerous assumption that their budgets are also fixed: They are what they are because they always have been and so that’s what they need to be. So it’s not their fault that they need to be supported at that level. But newsrooms are terribly inefficient and too many of their expenses were fueled by ego. We bear business responsibility. That is why I am teaching business in a journalism school, so we can be better stewards.

Like most of what Jarvis writes, it’s worth a read.

Camille Paglia, responding as it were to a letter from St. Louis Park, discounts McCain’s ability to hold executive office in favor of Obama’s substantially higher level of relevant experience.

What is her assessment based on?

Like a broken record…he’s run an inspiring campaign. He’s shrewd. He looks good; smells good. The egg justifies the chicken.

Yes, McCain is profoundly patriotic, as were his military forebears. Patriotism, rather than race, may indeed prove to be the determining factor in this election. But I simply don’t see that McCain has the basic managerial ability to run the complex Washington bureaucracy. Obama lacks executive experience too, but he has shown a shrewd ability to captain a national campaign. And Obama’s sober, deliberative temperament seems to me genuinely presidential. In contrast, McCain’s bizarre grandstanding during the Wall Street crisis (such as his embarrassingly unprofessional call for cancellation of the first debate) suggested that he lacks the steadiness of behavior and expression that we have a right to expect in a president.

Then she labels McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and call to postpone the first debate, in a time of financial crisis and investor panic, as grandstanding; a ridiculous charge given the events as they occurred. The fact that we didn’t have a greater meltdown is not cause for criticism for what was clearly an executive decision to err on the side of precaution.

I know this is editorial bullsh*t but its bullsh*t nonetheless and Obama’s brain dead followers are eating it up like cattle being fed on the way to the rendering plant.

To:  The Broadcast Media

From:  Mitch Berg

Re:  News

All,

When carrying broadcast packages involving Governor Palin on the campaign trail, it is not necessary to use Saturday Night Live’s parody of Governor Palin as a coda to every single piece on the subject. 

The parody may have been news a month or so ago (along with the “news” that SNL finally has perhaps its third passably-funny bit since Norm MacDonald left the cast).  A month later, it is a weekly bit on an (I’ll be charitable) entertainment show.  It happens as regularly as Linday Lohan passing out in a puddle of vomit.  This isn’t even “dog bites man”, it’s “dog piddles on tree”.

Giving Tina Fey a half-week-old last word on every one of Governor Palin’s statements is sort of like appending Zach Braff’s or Hugh Laurie’s impression of a doctor onto every story about healthcare.  To the best of my knowledge, no network news department (except perhaps  MSNBC) does this.

See to this.  Thanks.

That is all.

2006 was a bit of a holiday from the upper midwest center-right blogosphere’s traditional shredding and hooting at the “Minnesota Poll”, the Star-Tribune’s biennial exercise in DFL promotion.  Things generally went to far to the DFL’s favor (we only salvaged the Governor and Lieutenant Governor’s offices in the worst anti-GOP bloodbath since Watergate) that the Strib didn’t need to try to spin, cook and mangle reality in the DFL’s favor.

This year, of course, things are different.  In what should be a slam dunk year for Democrats in Minnesota, which is traditionally as solid-Democrat as a state can get without massive head injuries, Mac is holding steady and competitive in most polls.  And Al Franken has been trailing incumbent Norm Coleman by high single to low double digits.

The Minnesota Poll, of course, induces its own alternate reality, putting Franken up by a blowout-territory 13 points – almost exactly the opposite of a contemporaneous SurveyUSA/KSTP poll. 

Like all Minnesota Polls, it’s done to generate glowing, feel-good headlines for Democrats, and assumes nobody will read the fine print.  The Minnesota Poll showed a 13 point lead for Franken because they sampled so many more Democrats than Republicans.

Details, details? 

Perhaps – except that this poll is used as a rote talking point by every media figure from Nick Coleman through George Stephanopoulos, who tossed it at Tim Pawlenty on Sunday morning (causing Pawlenty to all-but-chuckle at the reference on the air).

The  Minnesota Poll has been shredded, over and over again.  Rumors of its demise in the Strib’s budget cuts would seem to be exaggerated, although not so much as rumors that the poll would have to clean up its act if it expected to help rather than hurt the Strib in these polarized times, when merely acting liberal on demand isn’t enough to guarantee acceptance anymore.