Ed (channeling Powerline), notes that Anderson Cooper’s big “gotcha” from the debate a few weeks ago, re Giuliani’s alleged misuse of security funds to escort his now-wife, then-mistress about, has come a-cropper.

Not that you’d know it from the Times’ “coverage” of this fact:

The New York Times exonerates Rudy Giuliani from charges that he moved travel expenses around through subsidiary agencies in order to hide his affair with his now-wife, Judith. People looking for that exoneration on their feedreaders will find themselves frustrated. Not only did the Times bury the story on one of its blogs, it put it in a graphic format that doesn’t allow for copy-and-paste. In fact, it isn’t even shown as an entry on the blog itself:

I expect the Times to start printing corrections on the undersides of pieces of used chewing gum, at this rate. 

Of course, even a front-page report on this wouldn’t unring the bell; the damage has been done, and it has been considerable. It looks like the Times wanted to make sure none of it got undone. (via Power Line)

Nope.  No liberal media here.

Eric Black and his “Black Ink” blog are picking up and moving over to MinnPost.com – but not without leaving an answer we’ve been looking for for a very long time – something I asked him (in his interview on the NARN last March, when he left the Strib), as well as every other Minnesota Monitor staffer with whom I ever came in contact (emphasis added):

I’ve always meant to write piece titled “Who Pays Me?” Never got around to it. But if I had, I would have said that I was working under a contract with the Center for Independent Media (CIM), a Wasington-based non-profit, which is the parent organization of the Monitor and three other similar state-based sites. And I would have said that the silly attack meme of some conservative bloggers that the Monitor was staffed by George Soros sock puppets was nonsense.

“Nonsense” – meaning there was no truth to the claim that George Soros backed the Center for Independent Media (which, at the risk of repeating myself, started life in offices sublet from Soros’ attack-PR firm Media Matters for America).  Right?

Because that’s what “nonsense” and “silly attack meme” mean.  Right?   

Soros’ foundation is one of several that contribute to the CIM so I guess I have some Soros money in my checking account,

Er…OK.  So the “silly” “nonsense” claim was actually true, then?

And do you think that if, say, Powerline or Ed Morrissey or I got so much as a nickel of money from Halliburton, or Richard Mellon Scaife or Rupert Murdoch, that the crack staffs of the MinnPost or Minnesota Monitor or or the Daily Mold would let it pass?

Black adds:

but I was never asked, pressured or even encouraged to promote any particular point of view and the same goes for the Monitor’s other writers.

Sounds good, right? 

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci of Kool Aid Report, who drew my attention to the piece, notes a hole in that idea big enough to drive the entire MinnPost office through:

Say your house has a mouse infestation. And further assume that you are an old-timey sort that doesn’t believe in exterminators or mouse traps. So instead, you buy a cat.

Do you have to tell a cat to go hunt the mice?

 Of course not. 

I always get a kick out of commenters who accuse me of “parroting GOP talking points”.  There is no C-list blogger in the Twin Cities who is farther off the Republican party’s official radar than I am.  I don’t get invites to the press conferences.  I get press releases only intermittently, and usually from campaigns – rarely if ever from the party proper. 

And yet I’m a conservative, almost-always Republican blogger.  Not because I’m on a payroll, but because I believe in the ideals of the GOP and the Conservative movement.  Nobody pays me to do it (outside the odd advertiser) – I do it because it’s what I believe.

So if some right-leaning sugardaddy group of right leaning sugardaddies wanted to come to town and pay a bunch of bloggers to generate propaganda, I have a six-year-deep clip file to put in front of them. 

Every member of the Minnesota Monitor was recruited because they are a reliable, left-leaning voice.  They are paid their “stipends” (at one point, $1,500 a month – unheard of for most E-list bloggers) because they will deliver what is expected of them.  The notion that any of them are going to go maverick and turn into low-tax, pro-defense, law-and-order conservatives on the Monitor‘s dime is absurd.  Eric Black retains some plausible deniability, here, but I think he’s made his actual sympathies pretty clear (as is his right!) since he left the Strib; one suspects, for example, that had Doug Tice left the Strib, the Monitor/CIM would not have have come calling.  Conservative bloggers need not have applied to the Center for Independent Media.

Tucci continues:

And it bears mentioning here in a non-parenthetical paragraph that this is the very first time anywhere in the year and change history of MinniMoni that anyone connected with that website has admitted as much. Why?

“Why”, indeed, on a couple of levels.

For over a year, MinMon’s management and staff reacted in every possible way to questions about the CIM’s backing – every way save one.  They obfuscated.  They misdirected.  They changed the subject.  They threw out cutesy tangents and scampered away.  Their supporters denied any Soros connection, ever more vehemently.  And yet it was true all along (not that there was any doubt or mystery to the question).

And why does Black admit it (couched in an attack on the “silly” but true “attack” meme) as he’s cleaning out his desk?

UPDATE:  Welcome Cap’n Ed’s readers, and any Instapundit readers that’ve leaked through this far into the story!

I’d like to direct you to Learned Foot, who was on this several hours before I was, and in three years of blogging hasn’t had an Instalanche (remember them?); a Ed-a-lanche and a secondary Instalanche can’t be a bad way to roll into the holidays, though.

Over at David’s Medienkritik – a bilingual blog about the European, mainly German, media – David (or Ray?) writes:

Imagine you are an American correspondent in Germany. You are encouraged by your editors to report only the most extreme, outrageous, strange and dark sides of German society. Your publication chooses to ignore the 97% of issues that bring Germans and Americans together and instead focus on the 3% that most divide the two nations – such as attitudes towards prostitution, social welfare, guns, etc. This seedy sensationalism sells – and that is exactly what your editors are after. For that reason, they also strongly encourage you to write whatever you can on Neo-Nazi violence – not because the issue is genuinely troubling – (and it is) – but because it brings good ratings and reaffirms your readership’s dark stereotypes of the Vaterland.

Beyond that – your editors oblige you to bring stories only on a narrow band of pet issues that they have predetermined are of “interest” to the readership. (In fact, you may have been specially selected for your job because you have a an ideological propensity to dislike Germany and favor stories that make Germany look bad.) When you arrive in Berlin, you discover that Germany isn’t quite the awful place you expected and – because you are a free spirit – the urge is great to report on the many complex aspects of German society. Predictably, however, your editors discourage any independent ideas that might shed a different (you might say balanced) light on things.

The pet issues and big politics are all they want. In particular, the editors want to demonstrate that Germany is a nation infatuated with pornography, cursed by extreme alcoholism and blighted by racist attitudes towards non-Germans…The editors supplement your work by sprinkling-in stories cut-and-pasted from news wires on Germans behaving badly worldwide. You eventually realize that intellectual honesty takes a distant backseat to the pet-issue template devised by your editors…Not surprisingly, the most “self-critical” Germans – those with a particular talent for shamelessly bashing their own nation and people – are held up as heroic dissenters and showered with awards by your publication and others like it.

[Hm.  Sort of like how the only Republicans that the Strib paints in a decent light are the ones that vote like DFLers?  This is sounding familiar]

Finally – because quite a few other publications share the same general ideology of your own and follow the same pattern of reporting – it is not beyond the pale for your editors to proclaim that you represent the “mainstream” of American media and that you are largely fair and unbiased in reporting on Germany.

It’s a trick question, natch:

Turn the mirror around…

Now let us turn this script around. The above is a reflection of how certain influential segments of German media have operated for years now. The latest Amerika-Korrespondent for Stern magazine – Jan Christoph Wiechmann – offers an excellent example. One of his more recent articles is entitled: “Weapons Trade in the USA: An AR-15 with your Coffee?” The opening paragraph reads:

“In Europe one usually receives a cookie with their coffee. In the USA it is an assault rifle: In the Texan solitude, waitresses with highly teased hair offer the things for sale in weapon shops camouflaged as cafes. Normal daily life in Bush-Country.“

The article paints a picture of daily life in the USA that is neither typical nor normal

Read the whole thing.

(Auf Deutsch, wenn Du willst…)

“Employing weasel-speak as a roundabout justification to just keep on raising taxes”.  It’s a long, cumbersome phrase.

So when I say “Sturdevanting”, you know that’s what I’m talking about.  OK?

Speaking of which; I’ve noticed that a lot of car dealerships along University Avenue have closed in recent years.  We’re in danger of losing those well-paid, skilled jobs, and the tax-paying employees that do them, to other states, unless we find a way to subsidize car lots with state money.

Sounds ridiculous?

No, don’t worry.  I’m only Sturdevanting.

And so, as it happens, is Lori Sturdevant:

The president of a 160-employee engineering firm [demanded a hike in transportation spending] so forcefully at a state Chamber of Commerce Grow Minnesota! luncheon on Dec. 4 that some of his listeners likely had trouble swallowing their mousse dessert.

“We need to find a dedicated funding source for transportation” above and beyond the 20-cent-per-gallon gas tax, said Bret Weiss, president of WSB & Associates. “The governor needs to get behind it and get something done.”

WSB and Associates?  And they are…?:

Last week at his Golden Valley office, near proud displays of his firm’s local work, Weiss elaborated: Minnesota is on the verge of losing a sizable number of good-paying construction and engineering jobs to other states.

Construction professionals stayed in Minnesota in recent years despite the state’s refusal to spend more on transportation, because a hot housing market and business boom kept them occupied. That changed with the economic cycle, he said. Unless the state steps up transportation funding in 2008, “it’s going to become very clear to everybody that there are no dollars out there” to sustain the industry.

So in other words:  subsidize the construction and engineering industries.

Wait a few years to boost transportation spending, and contracts of necessity will go to national engineering and construction firms, he predicted. That won’t produce nearly the desired ripple through the Minnesota economy that spending now on locally based firms would.

“We need to be smarter about this,” he said. Smarter means not just more spending but the more-consistent spending over time that can anchor good jobs here.

So if the big worry is that out of state firms will come to Minnesota to bid on projects that don’t exist today, then why aren’t Minnesota firms bidding on out-of-state projects now?

“I’m not asking anybody to give me anything just because I’m a Minnesotan.

Well, let’s be clear; that’s exactly what you’re asking for!  You want the state to pony up for transportation spending purely to keep jobs – and, incidentally, give your companies a ready, flush market – in Minnesota.

I’m saying: At least give me a shot. I can bring a lot of employees into this state, and those are great jobs. … Why not try to foster this industry here, as we do so many others?”

Translated: “This state got into the subsidy business decades ago.  So even though the state has slowed down the giveaway machine, we want our piece of the pie”.

Shorter translation:  “I’m Sturdevanting”.

I noticed a lot of search engine referrals looking for info on former KSTP-AM nightsider Chris Krok.  That’s usually a sign something’s going on.

Sure enough – he’s been gassed at WSB in Atlanta.

Hang in there, CK.  It’s a crummy business.

Brendan Miniter at the WSJ notes that while Hollywood’s much-ballyhooed slate of anti-war movies has stiffed terribly, lower-budget productions are doing quite well in the alternative media:

Some of the are amateur productions and others are professionally produced, such as two films that have drawn about 700,000 viewers each: “Insurgent Snipers vs. U.S. Marines,” put together by the History Channel, and “Iraq Marine Battle Fallujah.” In the latter, U.S. Marines are seen assaulting Fallujah. The film, just 4 1/2 minutes, plays to the tune of Dire Straits’ 1985 hit “Brothers in Arms,” and is a better tribute to the men who fight the nation’s wars that anything Hollywood has put out since John Wayne’s 1968 film “The Green Berets.”

Much more to read, naturally.

NBC Rejects Ad From Conservative Group

NBC has rejected a TV ad by Freedom’s Watch, a conservative group that supports administration policy in Iraq, that asks viewers to remember and thank U.S. troops during the holiday season.

NBC said it declined to air the ad because it refers to the group’s Web site, which the network said was too political, not because of the ad’s message.

“Anybody in the world who would look at this ad would come away with nothing other than we should thankful for their service,” Freedom’s Watch president Brad Blakeman said.

… 

The Freedom’s Watch Web home page contains links for visitors to demonstrate their support for the troops. It also contains a welcoming message that states: “For too long, conservatives have lacked a permanent political presence to do battle with the radical special interests groups and their left-wing allies in government.”

“We have a policy that prohibits acceptance of advertising that deals with issues of public controversy,” Wurtzel said. “This particular ad, in and of itself, is fine. It thanks the troops for their action overseas. We asked them to eliminate a URL address where a person is asked to contact elected officials and told not to cut and run on the war on terror.”

NBC rejected a previous Freedom’s Watch ad that addressed funding for the troops.

Good thing McCain/Feingold makes sure political advertising is fair and balanced, huh?

As a service to my audience, I provide you the following transcript.

It was surreptitiously recorded at a meeting of the Star/Tribune editorial board, sometime last week.  The source’s name can not be revealed, to protect her or his identity.  All names are redacted.

Transcript begins:

EDITOR A [MALE]:  It’s time to run another “Roodwip” story”.

COLUMNIST B[MALE] (Sotto voce, to COLUMNIST C [FEMALE]):  Psst – what’s “roodwip”?

COLUMNIST C [FEMALE] (Sotto voce):  “Republican” who’s disappointed with Pawlenty”.

EDITOR A: So – who do we use?  John Gunyou?

EDITOR D [FEMALE]:  We use him all the time.  Too much.  We’re getting lots of mail from people saying he was the “Republican” budget director for a “Republican” governor that governed to the left of the previous DFL governor.  I think we should broaden our base of “dissatisfied Republicans”

EDITOR A: Why?  Wingnut readers are all stupid!

COLUMNIST C: Yaaaaaay!  Stupid!

EDITOR E [MALE]: Be that as it may, the wingnuts aren’t the audience.  It’s the “undecided voter” we need to address.  They need to believe that there’s a genuine current within the GOP to oppose the likes of David Strom and Tim Pawlenty.

COLUMNIST C: Booooo!  Strom!  Booooooo!

EDITOR D [FEMALE]:  Have a drink, L__i.  No, I hear you.  The question is, we keep using the same ones, over and over and over.  We’ve got Gunyou…

COLUMNIST F [MALE]: …who’s kinda played out

EDITOR D:  …I agree.  And there’s Elmer Anderson…

COLUMNIST B: …who’s dead…

EDITOR D: …and Arne Carlson…

EDITOR A:  We cant’ use him.  He’s still the sitting governor!

EDITOR F:  Er, no sir, that’s Tim Pawlenty.  Carlson’s been out of office for nine years.  But Republican have pretty well abandoned him.  Who else can we get?

EDITOR D: Well, it’s not easy.  Most Republicans do support the governor, and even more support the “no taxes” line, even if they don’t explicitly support the Taxpayers’ League.

COLUMNIST C: Booooooo!

COLUMNIST B: But I read that Republicans are getting upset about that type of irresponsible leadership!

EDITOR F:  Er, N__k?  You actually wrote that column?

COLUMNIST B:  Oh.  Well…

EDITOR A:  We need to find another “disaffected Republican”.  Maybe we need to do like the New Republic did and have someone just make stuff up?

EDITOR D:  Well, that’s the contingency plan.  In the meantime, though, I have one guy in mind…

EDITOR A:  And he’s a Republican?

EDITOR D: Yes!

EDITOR A:  Who does nothing but bitch about Republicans?

EDITOR D: Of course!

EDITOR A: And espouses policies that are not one iota different than those of the DFL…?

COLUMNIST C:  Praise be unto the DFL!

EDITOR D:  Duh!

EDITOR A (as trumpets sound a fanfare): As it is written, so shall it be done!

EDITOR F:  Er, a simple “make it happen” would do…

EDITOR A (irate, as trumpets fall silent):  As it is written, so shall it be done!

I had no idea meetings went like that…

As further proof that sports journalism is to “journalism” as working at White Castle is to “Orthodox Judaism”, Stephen A. Smith is calling for censorship of bloggers.

In Part III of his interview with the Los Angeles Daily News‘ Tom Hofarth, Stephen A. reveals how he would fix journalism: Prevent bloggers from “disseminating information.” We understand that it originally had a laugh track.

“And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is …someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts.”

But note:  Stephen A. Smith would be an “expert” in the “journalism industry”, and be given a “format” to “disseminate” to the “masses”.  Because he’s “trained”.  You can tell by his command of the English language that he’s better than all of us in the “internet business”.

Sheesh.  Reading Stephen Smith is like listening to Clem Haskins speak.

It’s true: You will not find a writer who has more respect for the journalism industry than Smith … with the possible exception of the guy who replaced him at the Inquirer, from which Smith was dumped for not having enough respect for the journalism industry.

“Therefore, there’s a total disregard, a level of wrecklessness that ends up being a domino effect. And the people who suffer are the common viewers out there and, more importantly, those in the industry who haven’t been fortunate to get a radio or television deal and only rely on the written word. And now they’ve been sabotaged. Not because of me. Or like me. But because of the industry or the world has allowed the average joe to resemble a professional without any credentials whatsoever.”

We’re not sure how Smith would police his new blog-free society; probably with some sort of expansion of the Patriot Act. Bloggers would be rounded up and sent to Gitmo, there to be made to input guacamole recipes on Rachael Ray’s web site.

Of course, reading the guy’s writing is almost worse than getting waterboarded.

This almost looks like Bsomething Michael Palin and Eric Idle would write and work on:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005.

This is the latest in a long string of such media gaffes:

• In 1916, a New York Times reporter took a still-exiled Vladimir Lenin to a “Binge and Purge” club in Geneva, Switzerland.
• During a 1921 tour, a Village Voice editor paid a $360 bar tab at “Putch’s Bar and Grill” for a young Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels.
• In 1997, an unnamed Star/Tribune reporter took a vacationing Mohammad Atta to the Minnesota State Fair, giving him $2000 (which was apparently spent entirely at the bumper cars).

I digress:

It was alleged that Mr Hamid told a BBC reporter that he would use the corporation’s money to pay a fine imposed by magistrates for a public order offence.

Thoughtful of them.

Lori Sturdevant’s column this week is titled “If economy goes south, is Minnesota prepared?”

I thought on reading the headline “by Minnesota, surely she means the people of this state; the productive sector; the ones that actually pay the revenues in to the state to keep the government (aka the big parasitic appendage that drags the rest of the economy)“.  Right?

Oh, who was I trying to kid.  When she says “Minnesota”…

The state’s $739 million revenue downturn through June 2009, forecast Friday, came as no surprise to the budget reporters in the Capitol basement — schooled as we’ve been by the long, strong run of finance commissioners who have served Minnesota through the years. They’ve taught us well that this state’s revenue stream is wickedly variable. It floods in good times — or it used to, before the 1999-2000 income tax cuts — and it dries up quickly during

…she means government.

As to the media beating the “recession” drumbeat…Kiiiiiiing?

Don Surber notes that Dit all depends on what the meaning of the word is “victory” is:

Chris Matthews’s new definition of Victory in Iraq means we lost World War II. But, hey, we finally won Vietnam.

Read the whole thing.

Of course, by Matthews’ definition, if you read it,  you won’t have read it, while if you ignore it you’ll have read it.

I’ve fisked Nick Coleman a zillion times. 

No, really.  I have.

And I’ve done it virtually every way possible; the traditional style; opening it up to groups of readers; as a contest; as an exercise in ironic reinforcement. 

I’m almost at a loss for new ideas.

Almost.  But not quite.

Today, a new technique – the “Sudden Death” fisk.  Here’s the rules: 

1. I’ll present the column without comment, until…
2. …I see a piece of Coleman’s projection or transference that totally beggars the conventional definition of “irony”. 
3. At that point, the fisking stops cold. 

Any questions?  No?

OK.  On to last Sunday’s column:

Paulose’s contempt for fairness…

Doh.  Didn’t even get through the headline!

Tune in next time!

The NYTimes’ share value is down nearly 2/3 in five years.

Kaus:

I wouldn’t worry about Rupert Murdoch buying the Times at this point. I’d worry about Rupert Murdoch’s nanny buying the Times. …

I might start a collection.

So I read Lori Sturdevant’s column yesterday, about  AFSCME endorsing a Democrat yadda yadda.

Sturdevant – the DFL’s unofficial PR flak masquerading as a Strib columnist, and whose writing style verges on Socialist Realism when writing about DFLers – was in full flak mode:

But brave faces — many of them battle-scarred…”AFSCME doesn’t always pick a winner,” said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, a former gubernatorial candidate, with a touch of defiance…But the Tuesday-morning crowd knows something else — several, from first-hand experience. They know what a big-bucks, take-no-prisoners statewide campaign looks and feels like. They can envision what Coleman and his allies will be throwing at Franken next fall…A DFL recapture of the late Paul Wellstone’s seat…

[Note to the DFL Flak:  It’s “the people of Minnesota’s” seat.  It’s not “Wellstone’s seat” any more than it was “Rudy Boschwitz’ seat”, or “the seat of…” any of the 20-odd other people who’ve sat in it.  Wellstone was just elected to it.  Please quit making this mistake.  Thanks – Ed.]

Brave, deviant, scarred faces; plucky underdogs in the face of the Coleman onslaught.  Reminds you of a Russian documentary on Stalingrad, no? 

So what’s missing?

An impassioned defense of Mark Ritchie.

It’s possible I’m reading too much into this.  But normally, when a DFLer is under fire (and Ritchie most certainly is), the Strib’s columnists circle the wagons and cover their guy’s six.  And it could certainly still happen; this scandal is a young one, and since Sturdevant delivers one whole column a week, it could very well be that her deadline fell before Ritchie’s scandal broke.

Let me be clear on this; not saying something is no admission of guilt or complicity, especially on someone else’s part, and I’d be a cheap hack yellowblogger if I said or implied any such thing.  I’m remarking on the absence, not drawing inferences.

I never thought I’d say this – but I’m looking forward to the next Lori Sturdevant column.

JB Doubtless over at Fraters is sounding off about punk rock with his characteristic subtlety:

People like to pretend that punk is about rebellion and challenging authority. It reality, it’s just a nihilistic ethos premised on self-destruction, emptiness, and most of all failure. The worst thing you can do in the world of punk is succeed. In that way it shares an affinity with gangsta rap culture which derides success in school as “acting white,” while punk derides success in anything as “selling out.” How dare you do well!

To be fair, “Against Me!” is, by all indications, your typical post-Henry-Rollins American punk band (yaaawwwwwn). Still, when JB quotes the Strib reviewer Chris Riemenschneider…:

Gabel became the Angry Young Man of future Against Me! fame around age 12, when he moved to Naples, Fla. A coastal town where many wealthy retirees go to soak up the sun and tax breaks (including many Minnesotans), Naples “is absolutely oppressive to youth,” he said.

…and replies…:

It also tells me a lot about Gabel that he would describe spending his formative years in an “oppressive” environment. Part of being punk (and a big part of its appeal) means never having to grow up.

I can see JB standing with a shotgun on his porch, telling those damn kids to get off his lawn.

UPDATE: My bad – I see the piece was written by Chad the Elder. The tone and approach seemed so…JBish. My bad.

On the one hand, I’ll chalk it up to Chad having had, perhaps, one of his brother’s patented hangover-bomb holiday cocktails.

On the other – Chris Riemenschneider is not a good music critic. I see lines like this:

At once bleeding-hearted but mostly apolitical, and apathetic but hopeful…

…and I’m drawn back to this bit of work:

The dialectic of Christo’s “Gates” is a reflection of the post-9/11 zeitgeist, absent the schadenfreude qua nervousness that has gripped the American populace in this world of “now-more-than-ever.” The semiotics of the saffron (en)robes serves an ontological function in re-animating and re-introducing the humanity of New New York to their perceptions of the orange joy of being – the being you felt as a child, vis a vis a pinata. The Gestalt bespeaks a Foucauldian Weltschmerz, a sumptuous feast of post-Derridian brio-cum-angst. It’s in this context that “The Gates” covers, even metastasizes, over Central Park like a vast dollop of neo-maternalistic, neo-Marxian mayonnaise.

The panels, a touchstone of familiarity to the bourgeoisie (nursing at the paps of American Idol), emanate as immense labia beckoning, even taunting the onlooker to become, to be the phallus penetrating into Mother Nature – the maternal yin imprisoned in the mechanistic yang of the city and yet floating above the concept of restraint – the “Gates” welcome yet repel; they silently ululate like a shtetl of schmatte-clad yentas and yet remain silent with the deafening-yet-voiceless torment of the ur-mensch; metaphysical yet material (or rather neo-material), smug in its tangibility yet internally, silently, futilely screaming in horror at its immateriality. The “Gates” are, in short, of a piece with and yet utterly discontiguous from the fundamental leitmotifs of our age.

Which one is parody? Does it matter anymore?

On Against Me!, I must remain apathetically, albeit not angrily, ignorant.

Not only does the new local deep-lefty-pocket-financed “Daily Mole” provide a shoddy knock-off of “citizen journalism”…

…it provides and even shoddier knockoff of our own regular (some might say chronic) commenter Angryclown.

Pathetic.  Even my commenters are better than the Mole’s “regular” contribs.

It truly is better here.

Ken “Avidor” Weiner is apparently using the Strib’s “Buzz.mn” to carry on his obsession with trying to “smear” regional conservatives with the most tenuous possible “guilt” by association. 

Let’s see how many times the former Screw Magazine “art director” bobbles the “facts”:

Time Magazine named Powerline Blog of the Year in 2004. Perhaps as an indicator of how low the GOP has sunk,

Well, there’s one. True North is utterly unconnected with the Minnesota GOP.  Indeed, distance from the party is enshrined in the “Manifesto” I wrote for the site. 

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its publication to spread lies?

Powerline’s Scott Johnson has been reduced to blogging with Tom “Swiftee” Swift, one of the nastiest, sleaziest bloggers in Minnesota’s political blogosphere.

Tom is nasty – but as he’s never actually worked for Screw magazine, that accusation comes across as a bit…disingenuous?

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use its official blog to carry on his vendettas? 

 If you have spent any time surfing Minnesota’s political blogs, you will have come across the nasty comments of MOB troll Tom Swift, alias “Swiftee”. Swiftee’s modus operandi is to make the blogosphere as creepy and scary as this picture he posted of himself on his blog.

Weiner then goes on, essentially, to whinge about how sad Swiftee’s cartoons (along with the fact that Swiftee is generally regarded as a better cartoonist than Weiner) make him.

How long will the Strib allow Ken Weiner to use their house blog as his therapeutic sounding board?

The Strib’s been cranking out the stories (and the wishful thinking) about the 35W bridge collapse in the Strib.

According to Sarah Janecek at Politics in Minnesota, there’s a story behind the story:

One GOP legislator, disturbed by the secrecy shrouds detailed in the Star Tribune, sent an email to MnDOT asking what’s going on. [PIM obtained copies of the relevant emais.] Here’s how MnDOT answered the question:

“Unfortunately, the relationship between our employees and some reporters — and I stress ‘some reporters’ — at the Star Tribune has become extremely strained…MnDOT employees have been subjected to professional and unnecessarily harsh name-calling, hostile phone conversations and phone and email harassment. MnDOT employees have come to me with reports of enduring profanity in phone conversations and having their professional and personal integrity questioned. Employees have further reported that, when they have granted interviews and provided professional information, they feel their work has been mischaracterized in print and facts have been disregarded in lieu of predetermined story lines.”

I’d ask someone from the Strib for a comment – but they’d probably punch me.

Janecek:

To be precise, MnDOT employees are tired of hearing “BS” in heated long form, and “you’re lying” and “you’re stonewalling” from the two career Star Tribune reporters with pit bull reputations: Tony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe. What’s more, a document request made one hour is followed by a series of harassing emails mere hours later asking where their documents are.

Reporters acting like jagbags? Nothing new, right?

Of course, there’s more:

…Many of the document requests are duplicative — different people at the paper are asking for exactly the same stuff. As far as PIM knows, there are at least eight different requests from Star Tribune people. Besides Kennedy and McEnroe, other Star Tribune reporters who are asking for duplicative documents are Dan Browning, Nick Coleman, Pat Doyle, Jim Foti, Kaszuba and Bob Von Sternberg.

Typically, on a big story like the bridge collapse, one editor is put in charge. This apparently hasn’t happened.

In other words, the Strib’s newsroom – wracked by layoffs and budget cuts – is a Sacramento fire drill.

Or is there more?

Better media analysis minds than ours think there’s something else going on: Star Tribune editor Nancy Barnes and others at the paper want a Pulitzer for the paper’s coverage. That makes sense to us. The bridge collapse will likely be the only shot Minnesota media will have in our lifetimes at winning the “Breaking News” prize. [Let’s all certainly hope so.]

Which makes sense; it’s something people’ve been predicting since the spume from the river was still in the air. Indeed, many of us – the Strib’s legions of amateur critics – lauded the paper for its reporting (albeit not opinion writing) in the wake of the collapse, and figured the paper might be in line for its first Pulitzer since the Battle of Yorktown.

Does it affect the paper’s approach to journalism?:

The Pulitzer theory also explains why the paper repeatedly fails to point out MnDOT’s legal constraints on document requests, an omission that is grossly misleading to readers. Media requests for government documents are covered by the Minnesota Data Practices Act (MDPA) and the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The most important aspect of these laws as they apply to obtaining government information about the bridge collapse is that the MDPA applies before August 1, 2007 and the federal FOIA applies after the bridge fell. That’s because the National Transportation Safety Board has an exemption from FOIA for any “ongoing investigation” so as not to jeopardize that investigation. Obviously, that exemption is broad and severely curtails the information MnDOT can legally provide.

Which – as Janecek alleges – is the part the Strib won’t tell the reader.

Is it just another example of “not having enough space” to fit it in – a standard Strib excuse when important details get left out? We’ve been through this before.

On the one hand, “jourmalistic ethics” tend to be exactly what a “journalist” needs them to be to get their story (and/or their Pulitzer).

On the other…well, read the whole thing.

I think it’s great news – for Republicans.

Jay Reding agrees, I think:

They’re apparently going to “balance” Kos with a right-of-center blogger, yet to be announced. Then again, I doubt anyone would want the job of “balancing” Kos unless it’s by giving him medication. I’m not sure of a writer whose name doesn’t rhyme with Fan Molter that even comes close to the level of pure ideological spite and relentless cheerleader-ism that Kos spews on a daily basis.

Then again, it’s probably good news for the Republicans in the race—the more exposure people like Kos get, the more people see the true face of the Democratic Party.

I may just start posting Kos’ kolumns prominently, every chance I get.

Don’t mind those engineers. They were sitting in class taking calculus and learning the scientific method when people like Nick Coleman were learning how to…

…um…

…well, anyway.

The point being that even though the latest news on the Bridge Collapse investigation – the one being carried out by actual engineers – indicates that the bridge didn’t collapse as a direct result of the failure of the Gas Tax – Nick Coleman still knows better than all those dumb engineers:

Get ready to be gusseted.

Let’s stop right there.

Has Nick Coleman learned nothing from years of having his neologisms thrown back in his face wrapped in ridicule?

I doubt that many Minnesotans heard of gussets before Aug. 1, but since the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge, “gusset” has become a favorite word in the mouths of politicians, particularly those looking to cast suspicion not on their politics or policies, but on inanimate steel objects.

Of course, if the “inanimate steel objects” (and, more importantly, the design work that went into them) actually were the problem – well, that’d be an issue, wouldn’t it?

Gussets are steel plates used to reinforce joists or connect girders. Although a three-year study of the problems of the ailing I-35W bridge did not focus attention on the bridge’s gussets, and although the bridge was still in the Mississippi River, it took only a week after the bridge fell for the Bush administration’s secretary of transportation, Mary Peters, to finger the culprits: Gussets.

A week.

Shocking.

Or course, two days after the collapse, Nick Coleman appeared on cable TV to pin the entire blame on Minnesota Republicans, funding, and the gas tax.

Two days.

She was immediately echoed by a private consulting firm hired by the Pawlenty-Molnau administration within hours of the collapse — without public bid. That firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, was hired for $2 million — coincidentally, the cost of a plan for reinforcing the bridge that was rejected by the Minnesota Department of Transportation months before the collapse.

Since Coleman clearly rejects all of that “empirical method” and “engineering” nonsense in favor of “knowing stuff”, I have to wonder if he wrote that graf without even knowing that it’s complete doubletalk? Two million was the price of a plan. A plan that might have planned to address the causes of the collapse (maybe – and we’ll never know from Coleman’s column), but, given that it came up “months before the collapse”, wouldn’t have actually fixed the problem, even had it addressed the actual cause of the collapse – which we don’t yet know!

The Pawlenty administration has been accusing critics of jumping to conclusions about the cause of the collapse because we argue, whatever the physical causes, that there was a dereliction of a public duty to keep bridges standing and bridge users alive.

And – let’s say it together – Pawlenty is right. “Critics” – mainly politically-motivated hacks like Coleman, Elwyn “E-Tink” Tinklenburg and Alice Hausman – were blaming Pawlenty before the last girder had fallen.

If you listen to Minnesota’s officials, it’s almost like the bridge never fell. It couldn’t have. After all, they had a great plan for keeping it up.

On paper.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH

You mean, just like the $2 million “plan” to keep the bridge up that Coleman mentioned not ten paragraphs above?

The one that’s distinguished from the “plan” Coleman now ridicules…why?

This is an illustration of the disconnect between no-tax politics and the real world, where gravity is stronger than wishful thinking.

And actual empirical science is stronger than the wishful thinking of a bitter old hack who wants, more than anything, to capitalize on the Bridge tragedy.

This next bit (emphasis added)…:

Pinpointing the physical cause of the collapse will require long forensic investigation. But CYA is Chapter One in the political playbook, so the pols are clinging to their Grassy Knoll Gusset theory.

…makes me wonder if the entire state can take out a restraining order.

Peters, the federal secretary of transportation, repeated her gusset tale Nov. 1, causing one gob-smacked Republican who heard her, Edina’s Rep. Ron Erhardt, to state the obvious:

If gussets failed, he said, “What is that but a lack of maintenance?”

Exactly.

“Exactly” – in the same way that a faulty premise is a matter of bad copy editing.

Numbnuts “Representative” Erhard and “Writer” Coleman:  if the gusset plate was designed wrong, it wouldn’t matter if it was brand-new off of the palette.  It would have been inadequate from the moment it was welded into place. 

That is not maintenance.

That is design.

That is what we get for electing scientific illiterates – or reading them.

MNMon’s editor Paul Schmelzer responds to my email and the post below:

Yes: Jim’s moving on. He took the Strib buyout this spring, helped us out with some very useful mentoring (a 10 hr/week gig) and now that he and his wife are moving full-time to their place in Grand Marais (this week), he decided he wanted to be retired, for real. I’ve really enjoyed working with him, but I definitely understand where he’s at. I hope he finds the time to write the occasional guest column for us, but, yes, by the end of the month he’ll be doing what retired northshore guys do, full-time.

I guess we won’t have Jim Boyd to kick around anymore.

Much.

A source at the Monitor (whose permission I don’t yet have to go on the record) confirms; Jim Boyd is leaving.

A source with knowledge of the situation tells me there’s trouble brewing at the Minnesota Monitor.

>> we’re hearing minnesota monitor is in
>> trouble. Jim Boyd has quit and there is some
>> consternation among the writers.

Rumor has it that Boyd – whose much-ballyhooed entree to the Monitor was intended to be yet another coat of credibility (along with hiring Eric Black) onto an enterprise that employs some good writers, some ethical trainwrecks, and some well-meaning amateurs – is moving on to another regional online outlet.  I’m working to confirm or spike the rumor.

The source also tells me that some local journalists are also upset in that nobody tells even potential employees exactly who it is that funds the Monitor.  (While nobody has formally confirmed anything, the Monitor’s parent group, the Center for Independent Media, shared offices with George Soros’ “Media Matters for America” during their organizational gestation period.  Nobody from the Monitor or the CIM has ever denied, after repeated direct requests, that Soros was the organizations’ sugardaddy). 

The rumor (and it IS just a rumor at this point) continues that Boyd will be joining the MinnPost – the new online DFL PR organ news outlet run by Boyd’s former boss Joel Kramer.  A source at the Post declined to comment and has kicked my request for an on-the-record comment up the chain of command.

More info as it becomes available.

UPDATE:  Roger Buoen, the MinnPost’s Managing Editor, writes “we haven’t talked to Jim [Boyd] about writing for MinnPost”

The new Lori Sturdevant column is headlined:

Legislative session could be idea-rich, cash-poor

Do you suppose anyone will make the connection?