Bob Collins at Polinaut notes the launch of two politics-oriented blogs this past week:

…tomorrow, as near as I can tell, a bunch of conservative bloggers are adding True North to their repertoire. I believe the link — when it debuts on Saturday, will be here.

Thanks for the hat tip, Bob!

However, I had to comment on this next bit:

Eric Black, the high priest of political blogging in Minnesota (formerly The Big Question) has launched Eric Black Ink.

Well, kudos to Mr. Black, with whom I disagree on much political, but for whom I have the utmost regard. 

But Bob – “high priest” of Minnesota poliblogging?

I mean, maybe if John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Ed Morrissey and Michael Brodkorb are respectively the Dalai Lama, Pope, Archbishop and Billy Graham of Minnesota political blogging.  Maybe.

Otherwise…?

I wonder sometimes:  If a group of diabolically-weird behavioral scientists were to build an entire universe around a test subject in which the reality we experience is altered in some key ways, a la The Truman Show – say, a red sky, gravity pulls sideways, the sun rises in the north, the Twins are having a good season – what would happen if the subject of that test were to suddenly (a la Truman) escape from that experimental world, and experience life out here with the rest of us?

Would they adapt?  Or would the fundamental change in everything they saw, felt, pre-supposed and believed so disorient them that they’d find it impossible to carry on, and wither and die like a spider kept in a jar?

Along those lines, I also sometimes wonder:  If the DFL stopped issueing talking points, could Lori Sturdevant adapt to the non-talking-point reality?  Or would she flash out of existence?

Sunday’s column makes me want to bet the “under”:

The media bigs tell Minnesotans regularly that U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s reelection bid is in trouble because he has mostly supported President Bush’s policies in Iraq.

Ah.  “Media Bigs” say so. 

It must be true!

I read this next bit, and picture Sturdevant, standing, looking as eager as a sophomore hoping the dreamboat senior class football star will ask her to prom, silently chanting “he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…“:

Maybe so. But for my $11 price of admission, the best measure of Minnesota political reality can be had at the State Fair. On Thursday, I listened as Coleman fielded questions about bridges, ethanol, bridges, transit, bridges, floods, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, the federal deficit, and — did I mention bridges?

“I want to tell you just one thing,” said a stern-faced Ray Martin of Stillwater when he caught up with his senator in the middle of Underwood Avenue.

If Coleman braced himself for a barrage on Iraq, he needn’t have.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…“: 

 [Coleman’s questioners] may not have walked away satisfied [although Sturdevant gives us no reason to assume either way – ed]. But my guess is that the senator did. They’d just provided him with more of the evidence he’d been collecting at the fair that Minnesotans’ minds are on matters Republicans seeking reelection find congenial — that is, matters other than Iraq.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…“.

Alternate possibility:  Minnesotans, like Americans, are starting to realize that Iraq might be doable.  Maybe not instantly, maybe not ending in a surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship built by a nation organized into the greatest manifestation of the New Deal experiment, but – in the way of all counterinsurgencies that aren’t resolved by killing all the locals and scorching the earth – eventually, and with subtle signs of improvement to go along with the declining costs.

Minnesotans (I will speculate) aren’t worried about Iraq because, for the first time since the contractors mutiliated bodies were pulled from that bridge in Fallujah, it’s starting to seem like the US is getting into control of the situation.  And when I say “Minnesotans”, I mean “people who live outside newsrooms and DFL covens like Merriam Park and Kenwood”.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…if he doesn’t, it’s because he’s busy, or he’s got a lot on his mind…he’s GOT to ask me…”

That includes the calamities Minnesotans will forever associate with August 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge collapse and the flash floods in southeastern Minnesota. The federal response to both of those disasters is getting mostly high marks — and for that, Coleman can take a bow…He turned the president’s attention to the needs of flood-ravaged Minnesota towns when, serendipitously, Bush came to the state two days after the flood to raise money for Coleman. Coleman’s pleas, and those of GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty, cut through the red tape associated with federal disaster declarations and got FEMA and the Small Business Administration on the ground with a speed that has to astound survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Grooooaaaaan.

That’s right, Lori.  Never mind that the disasters are of orders of magnitude different scales, and that unlike Louisiana Democrat Governor Kathleen Blanco and NoLA Democrat mayor Ray Nagin, local officials were both competent and less interested in securing political cover. 

Ms. Sturdevant must have gone into journalism because she flunked math.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…he knows it’s TRUE LOVE, as much as I do!…he’s GOT to ask me…”

I add emphasis below:

…Coleman may have been spared barbs about Iraq because, as he claimed, “most Minnesotans support my position that we simply can’t cut off funding for the war” and abruptly withdraw troops. On the other hand, the State Fair chapter of Minnesota Nice may have precluded the kind of conversation — or confrontation — the topic begets.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…if he doesn’t…” …then blame it on a bit of facile folk-pop psychology.

One thing’s for sure; when it’s time to measure Minnesota’s cultural barometer, you can count on Lori Sturdevant to check the wind gauge:

Fairgoers weren’t shy about mentioning the war down Underwood Avenue a piece [“a piece”.  Oh, good lord.  ed.], where DFL challengers Mike Ciresi and Al Franken had set up shop.

 To be fair, fairgoers at the Franken booth “weren’t shy” about issueing dangling Halliburton references or theorizing that the World Trade Center fell to a controlled demolition, either.

But while Sturdevant is tone-deaf to culture outside of her native habitat, she is a master of Socialist Realist flakkery, issuing a pealing paeon to those the Talking Points anoint:

If ribbons were awarded for crowd-drawing capacity by politicians, Franken would take purple. Every time the former “Saturday Night Live” comedian, author and radio talker showed up — which happened daily, for long hours — a queue formed for photos and autographs. Old political hands likened his appeal to that of 1998 fair phenom Jesse Ventura — a portentous comparison.

Less “portentous” than strained.  Ventura took in – as in, “bamboozled” – a little over a third of the electorate with a mixture of faux-populist bluster and a veneer of libertarianism (that he tossed aside like a Mustang Ranch souvenir mug when he got into office), which he sold to a credulous state at a time when people took elections as seriously as they take American Idol. Franken’s demographic – autodramatic middle-aged granola crones, gaunt state workers with anal-retentive gray beards, fashionably-downmarket-looking Hamline students – are comparable to Ventura’s masses only by the triteness of their understanding of the issues.

Those words undoubtedly buoyed his spirits that evening as he boarded an airplane bound for Baghdad. Minnesotans may have given him a pass on the war at the State Fair — but he has to wonder whether it was only a respite, as fleeting as the fair itself.

“he’s GOT to ask me…he’s GOT to ask me…if not today, then tomorrow!…he’s GOT to ask me…”

On Friday, I talked with MPR reporter Jess Mador about the countdown to the Republican National Convention, which stands at “one year” right about now.

The mystery – When will the piece air?

It might be on “All Things Considered” this afternoon.

Or it might be on “Morning Edition” tomorrow.

And it might or might not include anything I had to say…

I’ll tune in, natch – but let me know if anyone hears it.

UPDATE:  I actually met Ms. Mader this afternoon at the “Press Conference”, and had a brief but pleasant conversation.  She informs me the piece should be on ATC this afternoon.

Nick Coleman is…well, it.

He’s trotting out the “V”-word:

Ford was premature: Our national nightmare isn’t over. It’s baaack. And so is the V-word.

Vietnam.

Well, to be fair, Coleman’s people were calling the war on terrorism “another Vietnam” since before the dust settled in lower Manhattan.  They said Afghanistan would be a quagmire before the first Green Beret jumped into Afghanistan.  They said the battle for Bagdad would be another Stalingrad. 

And always, always, the “V” word.  Said with a smug, knowing smirk that was usually followed by a titter (audible or not). 

U.S. forces were in Vietnam for 15 years and 2 million people died, including 58,000 Americans (1,100 from Minnesota), all to keep Asian countries from falling into Communist hands (like falling dominoes) and to keep the bad guys over there, instead of over here. It was a bloody waste that divided Americans for years until most grew sick of paying lives for an unnecessary war.

I could go on fisking Coleman – but he’s already said everything I need to hear to show my point.  I wrote about this over the last few weeks – in my Small War series.  Coleman is proving my point.

The Pentagon’s biggest problem is that it spent the first three years in Iraq re-fighting the Cold War.  The first three weeks – the part that ended with President Bush correctly declaring “Mission Accomplished” on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln – were the war that the military spent fifty years practicing for; high-tech, fast, armored, aerial, with a small group of elite troops crushing a much larger force of ill-trained but heavily-armed enemies. 

I listened to the vacuous Mark Heaney “Minnesota Matters” show on the local FrankenNet Air America affiliate the other day.  Heaney’s guest – the director of some astroturf “Peace” group – was kvetching about how Americans weren’t being asked to “sacrifice” for this war, “like we did in World War II”, with a draft and a massive home-front effort.  Leave aside the fact that the military doesn’t want a draft, and that a mass, draftee military is historically utterly counterproductive for fighting the kind of war we face in Iraq; it’s a sign that the left is stuck between it’s only templates for “Successful” war, with “success” meaning “whatever delivers it to power”.  World War II – with its immense, statist effort and total societal immersion in the war effort – was, for all that it did say about America, a monument to socialism.  And that’s not even a bad thing; it’s also a historical anomaly; the vast majority of wars throughout history have pitted professional warriors against other professional warriors, or similar fighters (like, say, jihadis).  Historically, indeed, the era of mass, professional armies meeting in armageddon-like struggles on immense battlefields shooting at other guys in uniforms started under Napoleon and ended, for all real intents and purposes, on the deck of the USS Missouri, allowing for a forty-year tete-a-tete in Western Europe, a “Cold War” where all the real fighting took place…in small countries, between professional soldiers, proxies and guerrillas. 

But whatever – as I noted the other day, World War II and Vietnam were the “successful” wars for the American left; they put the left in power in this country, and returned it there, respectively. 

Oh, yeah.  Coleman – a member of a left-of-center media establishment that has been in the bag for the Democrats for two generations – is angry about “big money conservatives” – dare we say, “big cheeses” – who are paying money to get the President’s message out:

Yep. Looks like the Big Muddy once again. With a modern update: Battling TV ad blitzes…The ads deliberately link the war in Iraq to images of the terror attacks of 9/11, although the 9/11 Commission found no evidence of a connection. Like linking Iraq to Vietnam, the ads show desperation, and are aimed at keeping nervous Republicans in Congress from abandoning the farm.

Gosh, go figure – using the media to fight the impression created largely by…the media.

Go figure.

And about the ads, Coleman says…:

They are abuse.

Word fail. 

A while ago, I wrote about the City Pages – the Twin Cities’ “alternative” freebie ‘zine – and their front-page article about the 35W Bridge Collapse.  I said that…:

 …”last week’s City Pages did a long, meandering, utterly speculative assignment of blame to everyone from the Governor to David Strom.  Absent from Anderson and Demko’s list:  “The design of the bridge itself”.

Former City-Pager Mike Mosedale emailed me:

That is incorrect. If you read the story, you will see there is a full section devoted to the subject.
Here is one relevant snippet:

“Even though it’s early in the investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board is already raising questions about the bridge’s design. One issue of concern: the bridge didn’t have any piers built into the riverbed. It also lacked what are commonly referred to as “engineering redundancies”—back-up support built into the system to minimize damage if one part fails. Last week, the NTSB and Federal Highway Authority focused on so-called gusset plates, steel sheets that connected the bridge’s girders together. The inspectors said the plates may have been a design flaw.”
 
I’m not interested in participating in your comment scrum, but I do think you should post a correction or apology.

Well, it goes to show you that I don’t read the City Pages as closely as I once did. 

But I apologize:  I missed the article’s brief nod to empirical fairness amid the pages of speculative, politicized witchhunting.  My bad. 

Because goodness knows how important it is to check one’s facts.

Brian Maloney – talk host, Cap’n Ed’s golf buddy and one-time NARN guest – notes that talk-radio legend Bob Grant is returning to WOR.

Grant was one of the few conservative talkers who got his start back during the days of the original “Fairness Doctrine”.  Of course, he worked in New York, a market that was big enough that a big-enough station could actually afford to air overtly partisan programming in absolute, “Doctrine”-kosher balance.  Medium-to-smaller stations avoided the hassle and kept their programming straight down the boring middle; as I’ve related, my own talk alma mater, KSTP-AM, only aired me because I convinced my boss, Scott Meier, that putting a conservative on the air could help head off complaints about Geoff Charles’ left-leaning style come renewal time.

Oh, yeah – he’s 78. 

About which Maloney wrote the best point in his piece on the subject:

In the big picture, talk radio is still failing terribly at building the next generation of talkers who can move it forward. As it now stands, the medium appears to be milking its oldest hosts until their final days.

Well, I blame Limbaugh.

Back when I got into the biz, talk hosts progressed through the business more or less like everyone else in radio – disc jockeys, play-by-play guys, programmers, news reporters – did; they started in small markets, worked their way up through larger and larger markets, and if they had the talent and the drive and maybe were just-plain dysfunctional enough, they might eventually make it to the Bigs.

Then – simultaneously with the death of the “Fairness” Doctrine – came the proliferation of relatively cheap satellite technology and bandwidth.  And with that  came programming – also prolific, and cheap.

Like, free.  Rush Limbaugh didn’t charge his affiliates to air his program; he reserved a spot or two in each commercial break for his own advertising, which his own sales staff sold.  Limbaugh lived off the ad revenue; the affiliates got a major-market mid-day host, and a damn good one, for free. 

Which meant that small talk stations in New Bedford, Framingham and Fall River Massachussets and Aurora Illinois and Santa Rosa California and Hammond Indiana didn’t have to spend $20K a year to hire (to pick a random example) a 25 year old kid with a graveyard shift show under his belt to run the mid-day show anymore. 

Most of the big local hosts – the Jason Lewises and Joe Soucherays and even Tom Mischkes, in Twin Cities’ terms – had at least a toe-hold in the business before the onslaught of free satellite programming.  The few excecptions – Dan Conry, for example – are exceptions precisely because of this phenomenon.  There really is no “talent pipeline” in talk radio anymore.  Seriously – if I got a wild hair and decided to try to get back into the business, even assuming I could get hired somewhere, I have no idea what station out there could anymore.

It’s that way pretty much throughout the business.

So Maloney is right to ask:

When they are gone, does radio’s most important format simply shut down?

Well, money will find a way – and talk radio is nothing if not a money machine.

But it’s kinda sad to realize that the closest we’ve seen to a “talent pipeline” in talk radio in the last decade involved Kris Krok going from KSTP (Twin Cities) to WSB (Atlanta). 

That’s a pipeline of a different sort altogether. 

I’ve always admired brain surgeons and constitutional lawyers.

So over the weekend, at a ceremony attended by friends and loved ones, I had both the Medical Doctor and Doctor of Laws degrees bestowed on me. 

My parents were so proud; at last, I can start making something of myself. 

But the celebration was short-lived.  There is so much work to do; cranial aneurisms to heal; rights to defend. 

As if that weren’t enough, I grabbed a Ph. D in psychology – because I figure I can help people solve their lifes’ issues much more effectively if I’m properly credentialed.  And my certification as a Mechanical Engineer also came through; what with all the bridges and stuff to rebuild, I figure I got some more time to set aside on my calendar.

Whew!

———-

Oh, you’re probably wondering about all those fuddy-duddy “licensing bodies”, and whether or not they’d actually grant (or allow the granting of) the degrees to someone who took one semester of college biology, has never taken a law class, whose entire background in psychology is watching two episodes of “Doctor Phil”, and who hated math class with a purple passion?

Licensing, scheissensing.  I am a brain surgeon/lawyer/psychologist/mechanical engineer.

I have willed it to be so.

———-

While I am all of those things, one thing I’m not is Catholic.  Nothing against Catholicism, of course; I believe Pope John Paul II agreed with the German Lutherans, finally, that the road to salvation as a Christian can be made clear to people through Catholic, Protestant, or heck, even Orthodox teachings.  I mean, for crying out loud, we’re all on the same team – right?

I’m a Presbyterian.  I don’t always agree with the Presbyterian Church in the USA’s governing General Assembly’s decisions, but the General Assembly doesn’t claim (in Presbyterian governance, indeed, can’t claim) to have authority over what the Bible – the revealed word of God – really means, either, so I can ignore them at my eternal leisure.  Nothing the GA decides or believes has anything to do with my eternal life; they move the money around, install or remove people, and set larger, temporal goals for the church – as an administrative and governing, rather than theological body.

And as I’ve noted in this space in the past, a number of Presbyterian ministers have been very important figures in my life; Revs. Bill King, Mick Burns and Jim Jacobson stand out, of course, as people who had an immense, permanent affect on how I lived my life, but there have been many others.  All of them married, some of them women.  Which is, of course, no-go among Catholics. 

Ordaining women – or gays, or gay women for that matter – is neither a positive nor a negative, in my book.  I do understand Catholics’ theological injunction against it (as well as the history of exceptions to that injunction).  But – and here’s a rather important caveat – it’s their church! The Vatican sets the rules, whether they’re right or wrong.  Just like those paternalistic blowhards at the State Medical and psychological licensing authorities, or at the Bar Association, or the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, they decide what the standards are for inclusion.

And, rightly or wrongly (in that great sense that none of us will really discover the answers for until we’ve finally gotten into the afterlife), the Vatican says “nyet” to women behind the altar.

I might disagree.  I might even make a case for why women should be ordained.

But while I might declare myself, or some woman, to be a Roman Catholic Priest, the people who actually get to decide who is or is not a Roman Catholic Priest might take umbrage – as, in theory, the Minnesota Bar, Medical and Psych Licensing boards and the ASME might do as well. 

“So what?”

———-

Well, the Minnesota Monitor’s coverage of the recent “ordination” of a couple of female “priests” approaches the issue with about the same gravity as I do being a Doctor, Lawyer, Psychogist or Engineer.

And there are really two ways to approach this story – via the “Mitch Is An Engineer”-like triteness that’d allow people to make such a unilateral declaration, and via the “coverage” it’s gotten from the local Sorosphere. 

Let’s look at Andy Birkey’s story in the MinMon:

Two women were ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church at an event in Minneapolis last weekend. The ordination of Judith McKloskey and Alice Marie Iaquinta marked their addition to the approximately 60 other women who have been ordained nationwide. The Vatican, the Catholic Church’s highest authority, does not recognize the ordination of women into the priesthood, and in Iaquinta’s case, the ordination could result in excommunication.

The West Bend, Wis., woman’s ordination has raised the ire of the Catholic Church in that region. Archdiocese of Milwaukee Communications Director Kathleen Hohl told WTMJ, an NBC affiliate in Milwaukee that they will turn Iaquinta’s information over to the Vatican.

“It is our duty and obligation to forward this information to the Vatican for consideration,” said Hohl.

First with the trite.  While I’m not unsympathetic with the notion of female clergy, I’m also not a Catholic, much less one of the Bishops, Cardinals or Popes that makes these sorts of decisions for the Catholic Church.  They make the rules (in the Catholic Church, at any rate).  So – if the church’s rules say “guys only”, and your drive to see women (or gays, or married people or whatever) ordained is more important than your membership in that church, why be a Catholic at all?  There are many Protestant denominations that will welcome one.  Or why not be intellectually honest and cast your lot with a secessionist American Catholic movement, and show the Vatican who’s really boss?

And saying “women used to be priests” is hardly a convincing argument.  Appealing to what is, after all, ancient history (and disputed history at that) is a dumb justification; things change.  “It used to be legal” could be used to justify polygamy, slavery, burning at the stake, infanticide, suttee, honor killing…and while ordaining women is nothing like any of those horrors, it’s also – ahem – not the way the body that governs that church does things anymore. 

Now let’s turn to Birkey’s article.  I obviously disagree with him on most every political issue, but he’s not a bad writer. 

But this article?  The women weren’t “ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church”, as Birkey claimed in his lede.  They may have consecrated themselves to serve God in the way they felt called upon to do so.  They may have even been ordained into some ideo-theological construct that may eventually morph into the long-promised American Catholic Church (“All of the contraception, none of the guilt!  Now with female priests”).  They may even legitimately be considered “protesters” against the Catholic injunction against female priests. 

But, unless the Vatican rammed through a rule change when I wasn’t looking (which I rarely am, but on the other hand the Vatican rarely “rams” anything through), they are most assurely not “ordained catholic priests”.

Now, as I said, Andy’s not a bad writer.  But this piece showcases the perils of viewing “news” and “journalism” through an entirely partisan lens.  Birkey’s main issue is gay rights.  The Catholic Church is a lightning rod for gay activism, as it is the mainstream church that has moved the least toward accomodation (barring many American evangelical denominations – but gay activists don’t seem to be trying to win over the Southern Baptists all that hard, either).  The Catholics draw, as a result, all sorts of protests, both crude (paintings of the Virgin Mary done in dung) and fairly sophisticated (activists like McKloskey and Iaquinta and their attempt to co-opt and/or skirt the church’s rules).  And Birkey’s story plays into that, in ways obvious enough to cause one to smack one’s head.  Classic example – for Andy Birkey to say they were “ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church” can be seen as either “wishful thinking” or “serving as the womens’ PR agent”.  McKloskey and Iaquinta were no more “ordained into the Roman Catholic Church” than I was “admitted to the bar” for claiming that I was a lawyer. 

So Birkey’s story turned, in its lede, served as a vehicle for McKloskey and Iaquinta’s wishes – we could call it “propaganda”, in the strictest and least-prejudicial sense of the term. 

Which is his right as a partisan activist writer, to be sure, but it is to “journalism” as I am to brain surgery, engineering, psychology and the law, and as Judith McKloskey and Alice Marie Iaquinta are to the Roman Catholic priesthood.

Atheists can’t be trusted with political power.  Indeed, they must be suppressed because they are intellectual descendants of Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot – atheists who murdered among them at least 55,000,000 people.  It is by these people and their legacies that atheism must be judged, and judged without mercy.

Thus, atheism must be excised from public life.  It should be regarded as the sick aberration it is.  The souls of 55,000,000 dead demand it.

(more…)

Ed notes an Agence France Presse story in which a woman notes that her house was mercilessly shot to hell by American troops, and has the bullets to prove it.

Any potential Crime Scene Investigators wanna take a, er, “shot” at this one (without cheating and looking at Ed’s wrapup of posts by bloggers that figured it out?)

UPDATE:  Given AFP’s record (i.e., as bad as the American mainstream media’s) on these sorts of things, I had to check.

Kudo’s to AFP’s crack fact-checkers; at least they’re American 5.56x45mm rounds.  I figured it was even money they’d be 7.62x39mm…

In a sense, I owe Garrison Keillor a debt of gratitude. It was my serial fiskings of his sniffing, haughty, holier-than-thou poison pen attack on Norm Coleman and his supporters (here and here) back in 2002 that drew the attention of the likes of Instapundit, and put this blog on the map, way back when.

But, like fisking Nick Coleman and pointing out that Lori Sturdevant is a DFL flak, it gets first repetitive, and then just a bit depressing.

Which is why I’m so happy Jeff Kouba stepped up to gut-punch Keillor’s latest exercise in sniffing self-adoration:

In true form, it didn’t take this Cynicism badge holder long to get around to mentioning the Current Occupant. He can twist anything to use as club with which to beat President Bush, even the already twisted steel girders of a fallen bridge. No human tragedy is so awful it can’t be used to sneer at one’s political opponents.

The Current Occupant came to view the wreckage and to express, in that intense and aimless way of his, his hopes for a better life for us. And then, having raised our hopes, he did not resign from office after all.

Sigh. I’m sure the grieving families of those lost in the collapse will find a few moments of comfort in the snarks written at the dead’s expense. Sometimes I think Keillor’s jawbone could slay a thousand Philistines.

Your tax dollars at work, as they say.

I was at the Cub store by 60th and Nicollet in South Minneapolis, and I met my old friend Joshua-Micah Cohen-Tostengaard. 

Josh has been a lifelong Democrat; the guy bleeds blue.  He has impeccable DFL credentials.  And he’s bugged.

“I am a Democrat”, Josh said, “but I hate the DFL and the national Democratic Party.  I’ve voted for every Democratic presidential, Senate, Congress, Gubernatorial, State Constitutional and Legislative office, every election, ever.  But I’m not going to anymore”.

I asked him why?

“Because while I have always been a good, dues-paying liberal Democrat, I have found that I just can’t abide my party’s policies!  Although I’ve been a card-carrying liberal my whole life, I cannot stand the left’s stances on gun control – I own an AK47 and am carrying a Desert Eagle in my cargo pocket right now!  I’m very pro-life, and find my party’s stances on all abortion issues to be noxious.  I support my party, but I find their drive to disengage from Iraq – indeed, to cut and run – to be horrendous.  And while I revere the legacy of Hubert Humphrey and Fritz Mondale, I think the party’s high-tax, low-growth, punish achievement policies are going to kill this state.:

 ” I think Local Government Aid is a subsidy of failure.  I applaud my party’s record on welfare, but I think that aid should be closely tied to work.  While I believe in my party’s history as a supporter of immigration, I support English as a national language, and believe that the border should be closed, immediately.  Oh, while I support my party on transportation issues, I think every cent spent on trains and buses is a complete waste.”

Was that all?

“Yes.  Well, there’s one more thing; while I support my party’s historical legacy, I think David Strom and Phil Krinkie and their “no new taxes” pledge issued exactly the call this state needs, no matter what the DFL party as a whole says”. 

“So”, Josh concluded, “I’m a Democrat.  But what my party has become, nauseates me.  I can’t support them, since they oppose everything I, as a Democrat, believe”. 

It was an interesting conversation.

(more…)

Here’s how the media world has turned around in the past twenty years; when I worked for Hubbard Broadcasting, from 1985 to 1987, it was a big honkin’ player in the local media scene, with a market value of around $400 million dollars.

Today, Hubbard is valued around a billion dollars – and is a “ma and pa shop” in the great media scheme of things.

Their flagship TV station, Channel 5, has taken its ratings lumps – but it’d seem they’ve done something right.  They were pretty universally acclaimed as having the best coverage of the bridge collapse last week.

Sarah Janecek, writing last  week, sums up the plaudits:

KSTP TV started reporting on the bridge in its Wednesday six p.m. newscast with the first live chopper shot at 6:22. The station stayed on the air covering the story live for the next 25 hours straight. I cannot begin to calculate what that cost. Never mind the costs of the employee overtime, or the expense of keeping helicopters live in the air for 13 hours straight, there were no commercials. None. The first commercial break was a short one during last night’s ten p.m. newscast.

Old man Hubbard, himself, was in the news room Wednesday night, observing his hard working news team. At no time was cost an issue in terms of coverage. He just let his team run, and run, they did.

Janecek also be-kudoes the local citizen journalist community.  Check it out.

Like most MOB blogs, I’ve made a bit of a sub-career of ripping on the hapless Nick Coleman. 

Last week’s two vile, politicized, uninformed, illiterate, hateful columns about the bridge collapse (1 and 2) were the nadir of a career with very few high points. 

But Roosh – from RooshFive – shows what would be possible, if Coleman’s editors merely trusted him less and forced him to take some input (or cut the crap and replaced Coleman).

It ends…:

All the more reason to find ourselves reassured and in awe, and so proud of the heroes of late – both professional and civilian, that have shown our entire country how great a place the Twin Cities of Minnesota are to live and work

…but you should read the whole thing.

I’ve not written a lot about the war in Iraq lately. 

Mainly because I haven’t had much to say that many other commentators – Michael Yon, Bill Roggio, Bill Ardolino and many others – haven’t said much, much better. 

Partly because I needed to learn a few things.  Do some reading.  Figure out what I thought about things.

The Administration – largely the Pentagon, I think – screwed up mightily between 2004 and 2006.  They lived down, I think, to the classic stereotype; they fought their previous war over again.

Things have changed, so far this year.  The “Surge” – with its focus on the kind of classic counterinsurgency warfare, and its straying away from the mania for “Force Protection” that sprang up in the wake of the bombings at the Beirut Embassy, the Khobar Towers and the Mogadishu “Black Hawk Down” skirmish, seem to have fundamentally changed things on the ground in Iraq, and even in the theatre that reallly matters; in Washington, and even in the Fallujah of American life, the media.  The chanting of the lefty droogs that “the war is un-winnable” and that “we’ve already lost” are starting to seem as quaint and naive as the Administration’s predictions that the occupation would be a cakewalk seemed two years ago.

Suffice to say that while the Administration was wrong and made mistakes, the Democrats are farther-off-base, and want us to make vastly bigger ones.

I was going to post those pieces this week – but the bridge collapse and its aftermath are of more immediate impact, here and now; that, and events in the US and in Iraq keep overtaking what I write. 

But I’ll be posting the articles next week, with an aim toward having a rational discussion about the issue.

(more…)

Nihilist:

…if Don Shelby is all seeing, all knowing and all powerful and all good (as he insinuates), why does he allow bad things like this to occur?

I cried out “why”?  Don answered “Why Not?”

Michael Brodkorb said it best in his headline:  PAWLENTY HATER NICK COLEMAN HITS NEW LOW.

First came his first, deeply stupid column on Friday, which blamed the “No New Taxes” pledge for the disaster as rescuers were still frantically combing the wreckage for survivors, roughly 12 18 months before the NTSB actually expects to know what actually happened.

Then, his – I’ll be charitable – scabrous and incoherent appearance on MSNBC.

And now, Saturday’s column, an apologia for the politicizing of this tragedy, and an attempt to seize “moral authority” on behalf of the likes of Coleman – fact-free politically-motivated ranters – from people who actually stayed awake in math class, went to engineering instead of J school, and actually have to deal in facts and science for a living.

The column distills everything that make Nick Coleman America’s worst working columnist into a melange of gutless lying that is almost too depressing to fisk; indeed, I’ve almost given up critiqueing Coleman, since under normal circumstances he’s become an irrelevant self-parody.

But people are dead, and this – I’m done being charitable – gutless illiterate habitual-liar political hack is trying to use this catastrophe to bully the ill-informed into accepting his deeply, abidingly stupid politics.

According to the pundits, the president’s response to the disaster at our end of the Mississippi is an effort to be seen as more compassionate than he appeared in 2005, when he just looked out the window of Air Force One after the levees broke in New Orleans.

Minnesotans will welcome the president. We need presidents to be comforters, and leaders, at times such as this…But let’s not pretend his visit isn’t all about politics, too.

Everything about this disaster — except the heroic efforts to rescue and recover the victims — has been steeped in politics. And the most calculated political effort has been the posturing and spinning by public officials trying to act commanding while making sure they don’t get pinned with responsibility for the collapse.

Alternate – and as it happens, factual – explanation:  They’re working their asses off to get ahead of the lies that people like Nick Coleman are telling about the situation; lies that are contradicted in Coleman’s own paper; lies that can only be aimed at swaying the gullible and ill-informed (i.e., Nick Coleman’s entire audience) into taking a desired action at the polls.

If you think everyone should play nice about it, you are living in Pollyanna Land. We are in a bare-knuckled political brawl in this country, and the government is in the hands of government haters who want to starve it or, in the alleged belief of presidential ally Grover Norquist, want to “drown it.”

You can’t drown government. It is people who drown.

Again, Coleman lies.  Not only does nobody this side of Ron Paul seriously discuss dismantling government, but one of the things tha so irritated wahabbi-DFLers like Coleman before this tragedy was their “myopic” focus on…roads and bridges, as opposed to boondoggles like the Ventura Trolley.

Friday, the Taxpayers League — the heart of the No New Taxes beast — called on us not to point fingers. They probably disconnected their phone and took down their sign, too.

Actually, sources tell me they were inundated with hateful calls, likely as not from people inflamed by ignorant  moral vermin like Nick Coleman.  Unlike Nick Coleman, the Taxpayers League took the phone calls, and responded.  Try calling Nick Coleman sometimes; he may sound like a stroke victim (no offense to stroke victims or, for that matter, vermin), but he can sure dish out the verbal abuse.  I have the voicemail tapes to prove it.

No New Taxes is not a slogan that works anymore.

We wouldn’t know, would we?  Remember – this bridge was first drawing red flags under the Moe Ventura Administration, when the DFL was spending the surplus like a crack whore with a stolen Gold Card.

That means don’t blame the people in charge for letting 140,000 vehicles a day — 1.7 every second –cross a bridge that wasn’t fit for traffic.

And again, Coleman is not just a gutless, cynical liar, but an illiterate, ignorant one too.  He repeats the lie that the “50” rating implied a “50-50” chance that the bridge was going to collapse, or that it wasn’t fit to be driven on.  His own paper iterated that, in fact, it was a rating; a rating that caused a response (more inspections, more scrutiny, and a focus on the year 2020, when the bridge was scheduled for major reconstruction or repair).  These were decisions made by engineers, people who deal in fact, calculation and empirical conclusions.  The opposite of Nick Coleman.

No one knew it might fall? Give us a break. What do you need? They were talking about bolting plates on it to keep it up. Maybe duct tape was next.

Nick, you lying, illiterate numbnuts:  You state this (“bolting plates”) like it’s some kind of anomaly.  That’s how you maintain bridges – indeed, any big steel-girder construction – when you have neither the option nor the need to take the whole shebang out of service.

And, in the opinion of engineers who do this for a living and for whom it is a matter of empirical science rather than ill-informed opinion, they didn’t need to take it out of service.

If they were wrong, it was not a matter of insufficient money.

The rest of Coleman’s paper doesn’t seem to have a problem getting that fact out there.

Why does Coleman?

Bottom line: It fell.

At least he got one fact right.

Is it political to be angry about that? So be it. Everything is politics. Politics is not a dirty word by itself. Politics builds bridges and schools and hospitals. And politics can make them fall down.

Catch that?

It sums up the problem with people like Nick Coleman.  “Politics” doesn’t “build” anything.  It decides how things like taxes are gathered, and how government budgets are spent.  Since we live in a “democracy”, that process is going to be bumptious and imperfect.  Perhaps Coleman would prefer a dictatorship?

But politics doesn’t build anything; engineers, ironworkers, carpenters and masons do.

And barring the odd war here and there, it doesn’t “destroy” anything either:  wear and tear does.  Time does.  “Acts of God” do.  Traffic does.  Design flaws and construction errors and undetected flaws in material do.   More often, confluences of all of the above do; the Titanic wasn’t sunk by an iceberg or a design shortcoming (un-capped watertight compartments) or faulty assumptions (that only three compartments would vent to the sea) or misplaced arrogance (doing flank speed at night in an ice field); it was the combination of all of them that doomed the ship.

Likewise, it’s every bit as likely that some combination of material flaws or deterioration combined with decades of heavy use and occasional abuse, construction practices, heat, weight of traffic, and undetected material faults caused this catastrophe as it was the nonexistant “lack of money”.

When Pawlenty vetoed the transportation bill in May, “Commissioner” Molnau was beside him, smiling. Dear, Minnesota. A transportation commissioner who grins while her department is being knifed is not a transportation commissioner.

Could we please follow this logic into the newsroom?  A “journalist” who makes s**t up as he goes along isn’t a “journalist”.

Now, a bridge has fallen and people are dead. The buck has to stop somewhere. Molnau was in China when it happened. She probably kissed the Minnesota turf when she got back. Because a Chinese transportation commissioner whose bridge collapsed might lose her head.

And a columnist who gang-rapes fact to chase a further his politics should certainly not be working in a town that values “fact”.

Jay Reding also guts Coleman like a fish.

William Kristol, in an article that notes the huge changes in…well, not so much the war, as the public’s media-driven perception of it, over the past month, sums up:

In terms of U.S. national interests–and in terms of its own political well-being–the Republican party faces a moment when, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, honor points the path of duty, and the right judgment of the facts reinforces the dictates of honor. General Petraeus will deliver the facts in September. If Republicans can keep their nerve under media and elite assault, then they will have the honor of following the path of both duty and the right judgment of the facts. I suspect all will come out well. Americans can sometimes be impatient and short-sighted. But when a choice is clearly presented, they tend to reject the path of defeat and dishonor.

Read the whole, vital thing.

I watched a bunch of coverage of the Bridge disaster last night. 

I wanted to figure out how to criticize Don Shelby’s unctuous – and eventually revoltingly-politicized – commentary as succinctly as possible.

Fortunately, The Elder – who at least works in the same building as engineers – is on duty, wielding deft satire…:

 The Don Shelby Credibility Bridge–spanning the divide between the local anchorman’s ego and reality–collapsed without warning shortly before 10pm this evening. Preliminary indications are that a massive failure in Shelby’s structural integrity led to the collapse.

 …and a fact-checking machete:

The man’s self-importance knows no limits and it was on display for all to see this evening. At a time when the news coverage should have focused solely on rescue and recovery efforts, Shelby almost immediately launched into discussions about the possible causes of the collapse and where blame could be assigned. He was obviously getting all his information on bridge structures and engineering from other sources, but he rarely if ever mentioned them, giving the viewer the impression that HE DON SHELBY knew all about such matters and was able and willing to start drawing conclusions while the rubble was still settling. It was a disgusting display of arrogance with an almost total absence of wisdom.

RARE COMPLIMENT ALERT:  The Twin Cities daily newspapers have, at first glance, done a decent job with their coverage. 

John Edwards – son of a rendering-plant vat-hauler (or whatever it was he said his dad did)-become-supremely successful trial lawyer, with a carbon footprint the size of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s feet and recipient of haircuts that cost more than all but two of the cars I’ve ever owned – is oppressed!

“We have to fight back against these people. We can’t let them do this kind of stuff to us. And they’re always going to be very powerful forces that don’t want us to hear my voice, and the voices of those like not just me, the voices of those like us.

They want to shut all of us up, Ed. That’s what this is all about. I’m amazed you’re still able to talk on the radio.

Um, Silkypony?  Senator Edwards?  Not only has nobody, anywhere, ever, discussed shutting down “progressive” talk radio (other than for non-payment of bills), in fact I think that it might almost be worth keeping some form of libtalk alive and kicking; it gives people like you a forum on which to embarass themselves.

Perhaps the huge cabal of right-wingers that supports conservative talk radio against the wishes of the American people should pony up a few bucks to keep lame-o-zoids like Schultz, Stephanie “Like Laura Ingraham, Only A Lefty” Miller and some of the FrankenNet Air America hacks on the air, under the guise of “giving them enough rope”.

Noodles at Freedom Dogs notes FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s pinky-swear that the Commission has no plans to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine:

Every once in awhile something that makes sense and shows some level of rational thinking comes out of Washington.  This is one of those times.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Federal Communications Commission has no intention of reinstating the Fairness Doctrine  imposing a requirement of balanced coverage of issues on public airwaves, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said.

Martin, in a letter written this week to Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and made public Thursday, said the agency found no compelling reason to revisit its 1987 decision that enforcing the federal rule was not in the public interest.

Of course there’s no compelling reason – now.

But if we have a Democrat president and a Democrat Congress? 

Compulsion will likely follow, in the form of a slew of Democrat nominees. 

Chairman Martin’s word is only as good as his appointment, and as good as the strength of the Free Speech advocates on the Commission.

Any bets, if Hillary! takes over?

Of course we all know why this came up in the first place, it is clear that Democrats want to silence any opposing views to their own.

Several Democratic lawmakers suggested that Congress take another look at the doctrine after conservative radio talk show hosts aggressively attacked an immigration reform bill when it was on the Senate floor, contributing to its defeat.

Even with all of their clamoring one only need to take a look at the wide variety of information sources available today to know that the Fairness Doctrine has no place in the current marketplace of ideas and news.

If it were about practicality, reason, or fact, there’d never be a question.

But it’s about quashing dissent. 

The Strib collects more DFL flak points, breathlessly reporting that, fifteen months before the election, Senator Coleman’s numbers have dropped from “plenty solid” to “still plenty solid”:

That’s a slip from last month, when the same poll showed a 48 percent job approval rating for Minnesota’s senior senator.

Cullen Sheehan, Coleman’s campaign manager, dismissed the poll, saying that “with 16 months to the election, there will be numerous polls with numerous results. The senator’s priority is to get things done for Minnesota.”

The story does have one relaitvely honest note: 

Coleman recently has been subjected to a drumbeat of attacks for his continued support of the Iraq war in the face of mounting public disapproval. National Democrats and antiwar activists have started two separate TV ad campaigns criticizing Coleman for his opposition to troop pullouts.

Background: in the Twin Cities, the major media and the DFL are practically indistinguishable; the number of reporters, not merely editors and publishers, who’ve gone on to jobs with the party and with various candidates, office-holders and “progressive” rent-a-blogs is staggering.  Lori Sturdevant is the smug, disingenuous tip of the figurative iceberg.  It is truly sad and amazing that the Minnesota Public Radio newsroom (as opposed to their programming) is probably the most fair and balanced in the region.

So the Strib, which is part of the DFL/media bloc that is broadcasting the attack ads, is now reporting the attack ads as news to help further their effect. 

Sure, a 5-6 point poll drop is news (also meaningless at this point in the campaign).  But look for much, much more of this as the we  move into the final year of this campaign.  The Twin Cities’ media is an organ of the DFL, and it will act as such.

A few years ago, quite a number of talk radio programming execs – including those at both of the Twin Cities’ big talk stations, Hubbard’s KSTP-AM and (later, in 2006) Clear Channel’s KTLK-FM – greeted the latest news from “the consultants”.  Although “The Consultants” have gotten nearly every trend in talk radio throughout the medium’s history utterly wrong, this time the prediction – that conservative political talk radio was dead – was going to be right. 

Of course, it was right after the ’04 elections, when talk ratings had noplace to go but down; exactly as they had after every election cycle since conservative talk had risen to dominate the format.

This past winter, after the ’06 elections, talk in general – and conservative talk in particular – took another hit in the ratings.  And the consultants – many of whom date back to the business’ pre-Limbaugh days, many of whom really really don’t like conservative talk, to say nothing of conservatism itself – cried “the witch is dead” yet again.

And, yet again, it seems they celebrated too soon. 

Where it really counts, Limbaugh / Hannity affiliate WABC scored big gains, moving from a 3.5 overall share of the audience to 3.9. That was good for fifth place among listeners 12 and older, higher than we’ve recently seen for the format in the Big Apple.

Though ratings are tracked monthly, the four quarterly “books” are what actually count. From those, the spring and fall surveys are most critical for setting future advertising rates, as well as sheer bragging rights.

No word on the NARN’s numbers, yet.  But  you can bet we’re kicking whatever hamster KTLK is putting up against us in the utterly make-or-break Saturday Afternoon time slot – and that Air America Minnesota might as well broadcast static for all the good tackling us will do ’em.

I left this comment at the Monitor, in Andy Birkey’s thread in which he claims that, since there are Republicans who commit domestic abuse or patronize hookers, the party should regarded “with suspicion” on gay marriage:

So Since Perfection Is The Standard…

…you’re set, Andy – because remember, you’re impugning the entire GOP‘s policy on gay marriage, all millions of us, all of the thousands of elected Republican officials, because of the actions of two Minnesota and one national Republicans, let’s hold you, Andy, to the standard you’ve set for us (and, while we’re on the subject, me):Three weeks ago, some of us caught Jeff Fecke committing a slew of, at the very least, ,journalistic gaffes:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Someone else found something.

He’d seem to be, at the very least, guilty of extremely slipshod basic journalism, and possibly plagiarism.By your own logic, Andy, the reader should regard all of you MNMon reporters with suspicion because of Fecke’s trasgressions.  The GOP wants the people to trust them on social policy; the Monitor wants people to trust them on news.  The only real difference; about .0001% of Republicans have been accused of domestic abuse or caught with their phone numbers in a hooker’s phone book, behavior that 99.999% of Republicans condemn. 

In the meantime, 16% of Minnesota Monitor reporters have been alleged to be slipshod reporters and/or plagiarists.  And since the Minnesota Monitor, breaking its own “Code of Ethics”, has neither publcly acknowledge nor corrected these “mistakes”, it implies that 100% of the Monitor approves.

So do you have different moral standards on different issues? 

Or do you perhaps see where maybe the point of your article is logically void?

Read both bits.  Place your bets.

Any state legislator that has ever bounced a check should be disqualified from budget debates. 

Any solon that has ever gotten a speeding ticket should be disqualified from speaking about crime. 

Any elected official that has gotten less than a “C” in a class, ever, should be barred from debate on education.

Absurd, right?

Not if you’re a kept leftyblogger, apparently.

Let’s back up a bit.

Gay marriage, to me, is not the most important issue on the public plate right now.

Oh, make no mistake – I think “marriage” should be a purely religious institution, and that the state’s only interest in a perfect world would be that of enforcing a civil contract.  Hence, I think that civil unions, as a contractual entity, should be legal.  For that matter, I think that any church or religious body that can theologically justify “marriage” between people of the same sex should be able to do it (although suffice to say that I’ll have an interesting time debating that bit of instatheology).

I believe this because, while I think there’s a legitimate case to be made for same-sex civil unions, there is none I can see for gay marriage. 

But since I, myself, am divorced, apparently according to kept leftyblogger Andy Birkey, I should just shut up and let everyone who’s never held out an opinion about what marriage should be about.

In this piece, Birkey takes the crimes, found and alleged, of three Republican legislators (two in Minnesota, one national)…

…and says:

These “pro-family” failures demonstrate that we should be suspicious when politicians try to legislate rigid traditional standards on people’s private romantic lives, because chances are, they won’t be able to live up to the expectations they set for the rest of us.

Get that?

Out of millions of Republicans, and dozens of GOP legislators in this state, the failures of two people invalidate the entire case against same sex marriage? 

Wow.

Since the Democrat majority leader got pulled over for Drunk Driving after the last session, the DFL should be ignored on public safety issues?

So since a number of prominent DFLers supported Kathleen Soliah, we should ignore the DFL on terrorism and crime issues?

Because of William Jefferson, Democrats should shut up about corruption?

Because Jeff Fecke has never admitted to cribbing AP quotes, we should ignore everything the Minnesota Monitor says?

(That last may be a bad example).

What bloggers do to the mainstream media – fact-check them, hold them accountable – some commenters in turn do to bloggers.

My long-time regular commenter Master of None has taken a particular interest in the Minnesota Monitor’s financing.  He (along with Learned Foot) has, apparently, expertise to match interest in the field, as he noted (several times)in the comments to this post, about the Monitor’s dilatory sense of self-accountability:

There is fairly compelling evidence that the Center for Independent Media is organized as a 501(c)(3) public charity. The CIM pays stipends to all of the MiniMoni bloggers, and requires them to write not only for MiniMoni, but to also publish their own blogs.

IRS rules for 501(c)(3) bars them from being active in politics, with pretty precise guidelines for what is permitted and what is not permitted. It seems like these rules should apply to not only MiniMoni, but also to the blogs that are operated by the CIM fellows.

Do you know any Tax lawyers in MOB that might be able to comment on this?

Learned Foot at KAR continued, digging into the tax status of the Center for Independent Media and one of its major benefactors:

Well, wonder no longer! While MinnMon and CIM aren’t forthcoming about their sources of income, at least we now know where $100,000 of it came from:

$100,000 to the Center for Independent Media. This grant will support the Center’s efforts to strengthen its New Journalist Program by establishing a national branch in Washington, DC. The fellowship program, with operations currently in Colorado, Minnesota and Iowa, mentors and trains state-based political news bloggers in investigative reporting with the aim of creating a robust corps of citizen journalists to add diversity and local expertise to media coverage of important issues. Fellows serving in the New Journalist Washington DC Program will focus their coverage on Congress, federal agencies, the presidency, Supreme Court and the influence of lobbying, the national press corps and campaign finance.

From the Sunlight Foundation! And what is the Sunlight Foundation’s raison d’etre?

Transparency! In government!

We’ve noted this in the past.  What I haven’t done, so far, is note what “Master of None” did in the comment above:  non-profit organizations incorporated under 501c3 status have rules to follow when it comes to political partisanship, rules that 527 status doesn’t have.

The battle has moved to the Monitor’s comment section, where Master asks:

So Robin, is CIM a 501(c)(3) or not?

You’re getting plenty of money from 501(c)(3)  public charities.  Do you really think it’s appropriate to run a leftwing blog site using tax exempt charitable donations?  Don’t you think the Red Cross or perhaps United Way could make better use of that kind of money?

As with the prior questions of the Monitor – on the whole plagiarism issue, for example – the Monitor remains officially silent.

A request to the Center for Independent Media asking their non-profit incorporation status remains unanswered.