If we learned anything over the winter, it’s that metaphors are out.  Put “crosshairs” on a map?  Say “don’t retreat – reload?” Use an even obliquely martial or firearms-related metaphor, even in an utterly political context?  You are clearly and immediately demanding violence!

Or so says the mainstream media.  When it’s Republicans.

So it was interesting reading the latest tack from Media Matters, the Soros funded propaganda firm that call the shots, directly or indirectly, for so much of the left’s “alternative” media:

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.

So they’ll be kneecapping Fox News crews, and putting sugar in their gas tanks?

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals …

Irrational loathing, at that.

“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.

The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”

Wow.

What a metaphor.

Conservatism’s response?  “Left 20, Drop 50, Fire for Effect.”

Metaphorically speaking.

I’d like to take a moment to talk a little more about the Senate Media Credentialing rules discussion from yesterday.

First – thanks to the working group, who did the vast majority of the work.  The group included (as noted elsewhere) David Brauer of the MinnPost, Michael Brodkorb (the Executive Assistant to the Majority Caucus, Rules Committee Executive Director Cullen Sheehan, Minority caucus communications director Beau Berentson and Senate Sergeant-At-Arms Sven Lindquist.

Now, here’s the important take-away; if the full Senate passes the change (it’s supposed to come up on the floor on Thursday), the Minnesota Senate will have the most transparent, open and non-partisan media process of any state government body in the United States.   Literally – there are a few legislatures that are in the same ballpark (Montana springs to mind) but there are none better.

And for that, I have to give my kudos to Michael Brodkorb – who in addition to being a mover and shaker in the MNGOP and the Majority caucus is a former blogging powerhouse, my former Northern Alliance colleague, and my friend.  He was the driving force behind the working group, which in effect makes him the prime mover behind the reforms.  The reforms themselves do nothing to benefit the MNGOP majority for which he works; as such, they could be fairly termed “statesmanlike” of the governing majority (and yes, it is a fact that the DFL members of the Rules committee supported the changes as well).  A good idea is a good idea, no partisan label needed.

Which made it interesting to flip through the comments in David Brauer’s original post on the proposal and the working group.  Brodkorb derangement syndrome is a real, serious issue among Minnesota’s comment-section keyboard warriors.

Brodkorb isn’t the only target, naturally;  Mark Gisleson, who to my knowledge has ever had a positive affect on anything, ever, wrote:

Don’t do it. If you do, you’re acknowledging that you are the equivalent of Mitch Berg, and that’s a libelous assertion because Mitch is a partisan blogger and radio host who will never cut a liberal an even break, whereas your work is objective, and not driven by liberal politics.

Gisleson is, to be tactful, raving and utterly un-based in fact; I was there to make sure the entire alternative media, left, right and utterly unaligned, could get access and be treated as “journalists” and reporters, with the same rights (and responsibilities) as the “real” ones.  I was there every bit as much to represent the likes of left-wing media like “The Uptake” and Minnesota “Progressive” Project as I was for True North and Minnesota Democrats Exposed and, for that matter, Shot In The Dark.

Not to push a “conservative” agenda. Period.  And Brauer, although he was added as “the token lefty”, was equally party-blind in his approach to the proceedings.

(And lefties should be a lot more careful about terms like “libel”; if being associated with me defames David Brauer, it would only be among people who are so deranged with partisan paranoia that the other key part of a libel charge, “damage to the victim’s reputation”, is pretty much a moot, if not negated, point.  Just my opinion, of course).

But enough of that.  The real message is that, if the Senate passes the bill (and from what I hear, even the DFLers who’ve been asked have approved), then the mission, to provide a better, more open, non-partisan means of access to our lawmakers to the New,  Alternative media – left, right or none of the above – and eliminate the old system that subjected the new media to the partisan whims of the sitting majority – is accomplished.

And that’s all that really matters.

It was April 28, 2003.  I sat in the public gallery of the Minnesota State Senate, with a legal pad (this back when WiFi was kinda rare, much less Air Cards), scrawling madly on a legal pad, writing down the salient points of the debate going on below – the final debate on the (intial) passing of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act.

As I sat there, I knew three things as clearly as I could see Ellen Anderson theatrically donning a flak jacket:

1. After 16 years of reading, study and activism, I knew more about this issue than most of the legislators on the floor, and any of the Capitol Press contingent – the Pat Kesslers and Laura McCollums and even Bill Salisburys – in the building.
2. Had I been able to do what reporters were able to – go out on the floor after the close of debate, to interview the likes of Wes Skoglund and Ellen Anderson and Linda Berglin – I could have gone a long way toward presenting the public a much better, clearer, more complete accounting of the issue than they got from the mainstream media – which, to be fair, had come a long way, at least in terms of fairness, in the previous seven years.
3. I would not get that chance – because I was not “the media”.  I was just a mere peasant with a blog.  And that just didn’t count, back then.

The media landscape has changed since 2003 – a lot.  And Minnesota has led the way; bloggers, especially conservatives, have blazed the trail for the rest of the alternative media, knocking down walls that had stood for generations between “media” and democracy.

But not in the Minnesota state capitol.

As of the beginning of this session, there were two ways to get media credentials to the Minnesota State Senate:

• Be a reporter who worked for a short list of old-media outlets that were spelled out, word for word, in the Senate Rules; newspapers like the Strib and the PiPress; radio stations like WCCO and KSTP-AM, which hasn’t deployed a fulltime reporter to the Capitol since Cathy Wurzer worked there, back when I worked there, in 1986, and MPR.  The big TV stations.  And that was about it.
• Get vouched in with the Sergeant at Arms by a Senator or caucus staffer.  These were usually “day passes” – short-term access to cover debates on hot-button issues.

It was both an anachronism – there is no mention of new media anywhere in the Senate rules – and a political football.  Things came to a head in the 2009-2010 session, as the DFL caucus gave credentials to “The Uptake” – a very liberal group videoblog – but denied them to Saint  Cloud conservative talk show host Dan Ochsner for being “partisan”.

The worm looked like it was turning this session; early on, the the Senate, now controlled by the MNGOP, denied credentials to all partisan news outlets, including the Uptake.

This was the road to madness – and, likely, litigation.

About this time a month ago, Senate GOP Caucus Communications director Michael Brodkorb – who is also the deputy chair of the MNGOP, a former blog star from his days running Minnesota Democrats Exposed, and incidentally my former “Northern Alliance Radio Network” colleague  – asked MinnPost’s David Brauer and I to participate in a working group to revamp the rules.  The goals were pretty simple; to…:

• Remove the partisanship from the process of determining who was a “journalist” and, more germanely, which “journalists” got credentials.
• Set up a fair, transparent, non-partisan process for apportioning these press credentials that both protected the interests of the legacy media (which have invested a lot of time and money in covering the Capitol over the years) with the imperative to legitimize and normalize access from the New Media.
• Make the process fast, simple and inexpensive for the non-partisan Senate staffers – the Sergeant at Arms’ office, the Senate Information Office and the Department of Administration – to run, and to add no extra burden or, in these cost-conscious times, expense to the process of administering press credentials.

Brauer was there in his rather unique capacity as both a vet of the  mainstream media and a reporter for a site that is a little bit old and a little bit new-media.  Me?  Although I’ve worked in the MSM, I was there mostly to represent new and, I suspect, explicitly partisan media.

On both the left and the right.

Last week, the working group – Brodkorb, Brauer, Majority Caucus staffer Cullen Sheehan, minority-caucus staffer Beau Berentson, Sergeant-at-Arms Sven Lindquist and me – had its last meeting, and handed off our final recommendations.  The recommendations went through the (non-partisan) lawyers, past us for one more round of making sure the lawyers were saying what we thought we were saying, and, today, to the Senate Rules Committee where, if all goes according to plan, Brauer and I will be testifying later this afternoon.

Brauer on the results:

Here’s what would happen if Senators approve our recommendations:

The Sergeant-at-Arms — a nonpartisan staffer — would administer the credentialing process. Senators and partisan staff are expressly prohibited from intervening unless a journalist appeals his or her rejection. (More on that in a bit.)

Believe me, nobody — not the politicians, not the Capitol press corps — wants to define who is a journalist. However, because Senate space is limited, we decided on a fairly low bar: Applicants for a session-long credential must include three pieces in any format in the past year on “matters before the legislature.” That can include blog posts, video, etc.

The proposed rules state “any opinion in such pieces is immaterial” for credentialing. Does this mean more “ideological” journalists will get credentials? Almost certainly yes.

Count on it.  I’m going to make a note to file next year.

But the Minnesota and U.S. Constitutions don’t limit freedom of the press to perceived non-ideologues.

However, publications “owned or controlled” by lobbyists, political parties and party organizations “shall not be granted credentials.” Lobbyists are currently barred from the Senate floor.

The entire proposal, post-counsel, is here.

Credentialing, by the way, means…:

• You can get in line for one of the six seats on the Senate floor (stage-left from the podium), or ten seats reserved for media in the Gallery. Four of the floor seats are reserved for the “mainstream” media that rents space in the Capitol basement; the other two are “first-come, first served” seats for any other credentialed media.  Four of the ten gallery seats are reserved for TV cameras from the lessees downstairs, if they show up.
• You can get material – agendas, roll-call votes and so on – from the Senate Information Office.
• After the final gavel, you can go on the floor to interview Senators – provided that you follow the decorum rules and the Senate’s unwritten dress code (.  This is one thing that media people can do that the general public can not.

The most important part of these changes?   There is no partisan input into who is a “journalist”, or who is granted credentials.  The entire process is run by non-partisan staff, working to standards that leave the process open to pretty much anyone who wants to cover the Senate and who can make a fairly minimal commitment – writing three articles, not being a lobbyist or a party employee, following the decorum rules – to just about the lowest-possible barrier of entry to the term “journalist”.  You’ll need to apply for your session pass thirty days before the session kicks off.

And unlike the current system, there is recourse if you’re denied.  Brauer notes:

The Sergeant’s office has 14 days to review an application. That means if you want to cover opening day, get your application in by mid-December. It also means you can’t just drop in on the Capitol and declare yourself a journalist. (There’s a separate provision for day passes.)

If the Sergeant’s office rejects an application, the reasons must be spelled out in writing. One legal advisor strongly suggested having an appeals process. Therefore, the matter would go to the Senate Rules committee, which must issue a decision within 14 days.

This does bring politicians into the mix. The concept is that the Senate is the final arbiter of its rules (short of the courts, where applicants can always turn). Could Senators bum-rush an applicant they didn’t like? It’s possible. But unlike the current process, the debate would occur in public and be governed by their rules, which again, forbid consideration of opinion.

The upshot:  bloggers, talk-radio hosts, videobloggers, and traditional news media will be considered journalists, for purposes of getting credentials, if the Rules Committee and then the Senate passes the proposal.  Partisanship will not be either a disqualifier or a factor in apportioning access.

Having a good alarm clock, however, will.

I think it’s a fair trade.

The other day, Nancy LaRoche – of Freedom Dogs, True North and many a great Protest Warrior send-up – reported on a conversation she’d had with a state senator about Mark Daytons’ office, which the Governor has had moved into a closet:

One of the most remarkable comments the Senator made was how Governor Mark Dayton has transformed his office. He installed cubicles into his office space for staff, and moved his office into… a closet.

“Sally Jo Sorenson” of the leftyblog Bluestem Prairie responded with the usual tools of the leftyblogger’s trade: name-calling…:

Pity poor Nancy LaRoche, the latest victim of slow loris syndrome, both thinking it clever to engage in a pathetic fallacy,

…the ofay ad-hominem…:

while breathlessly reporting idle chatter from a senator in Michael Brodkorb’s caucus as breaking news.

…and, as a noxious little “bonus”, a gratuitous reference to Nancy’s employer.

Oh, and a smidgen of factoid – that Rachel Stassen-Berger had “reported” the story a month earlier in the Strib:

The new governor has taken the reins of state, but he’s letting go of the some of the trappings. When visitors come into the ornate, spacious corner office traditionally reserved for Minnesota’s head of state, they will find three staffers.

Now, Sally Jo Sorenson not by a long shot the most noxious leftyblogger out there – that would be worth a poll, but I’m not going to be the one to throw it.  Still, her post has the three things on which most – too much – Minnesota DFL-blogging relies:

• Snark
• Insult
• A muted threat (to Nancy’s livelihood, in this case.  Seriously – what is the purpose of dragging someone’s day job into a stupid political discussion?  Is her goal to get her readers to call Nancy’s boss to try to get her fired, or what?  That’s so classy!

…and not a whole lot else.

Sheila Kihne, being a conservative blogger, goes the extra step – cutting to the real story:

With Mark Dayton and the Minnesota media establishment, where there’s smoke….there’s a fire extinguisher.

Now, let’s combine Nancy’s closet story with another conservative blogger’s find from the Strib. – Crystal Kelly asked “Is Mark Dayton Really Sober?” just a few days before the 2010 election. She wrote:

I ran across an article from the StarTribune, published July 4 2010, which lead me down a path that questions Mark Dayton’s sobriety. The article was titled, “Mark Dayton: a topsy-turvey ride.” In the second paragraph, something caught my eye. It said, “Sipping from a bottle of kombucha, a fermented tea that has become a campaign trail staple, this former U.S. senator is trying to revive an up-and-down political career at age 63.”

Crystal’s post provided research that recovering Alcoholics like Dayton SHOULD NOT be drinking Kombucha tea and the FDA is investigating the product labeling because of the alcohol content.. The Strib reported that the drink is a “campaign trail staple,” but never managed the same intellectual curiosity about the habits of a man who wanted to be our Governor. “Ha, ha! Can I try a sip?”

The media’s fabled curiosity shut down, of course – as it did with all things related to Dayton’s history – his “alternative teaching license” (a story Sheila led), his very dubious employment record with the New York Public Schools (ditto), his infamous bolt-and-run from DC while a Senator, the treatment history for his alcoholism, his mental health state and medications…

…as opposed to…:

What’s that you say? Tom Emmer’s son posted what on Facebook?

If I were a reporter and some liberal politician told me they worked in a closet, or I got a packet of information that seemed to indicate a past political payoff, or I noticed a recovered alcoholic drinking Kombucha tea all day long, or I found out that Dayton had lied about his resume……well, I might have some follow-up questions.

But of course, I’m not a reporter. I’m a partisan blogger…..and Mark Dayton’s a liberal. Herein lies the problem.

So there’s the relentless search for fact, and the exercise of the kind of courtesy to which the likes of our Capitol Press Corps practice (in re Republicans)…

…and then there’s snark, insult and threats.  Or as Bill Clinton’s staff called it, “Delay, Deny, Destroy”.

My point?  Oh, I dunno – Sheila Kihne is a better writer and blogger than Ms. Sorenson?   I can run with that.

So the remaining question is – what animal will Sally Jo Sorenson name Sheila Kihne?

I’m gonna bet it’ll be a real burn!

(more…)

Like Muammar Gaddhafi and Hosni “Rico” Mubarak, some of America’s leftists in places like Minneapolis and Madison are having a hard time twigging the fact that they don’t control everything anymore.

“Phoenix Woman” from Mercury Rising, is one of them.  One of her readers is upset that National Public Radio isn’t entirely their personal toy anymore:

The following is from an e-mail received from a reader of MR. Said reader has given me permission to reproduce it here, with spelling edits [I’ll just bet there were – Ed.]:

Just tried to call in to Talk of the Nation while they were doing a program on Wisconsin.

Back in the old days, the show used to allow various comments so long as they were on topic.

Er, no.  NPR programs are always tightly screened, and always have been.

But today, the FIRST thing the screener said was “With a state budget deficit of $2 billion, what should public employees be expected to give?”

When I tried to say “They’ve ALREADY given sixteen furlough days in the past two years!”, the screener cut me off, saying that they wanted only people who were going to answer their (loaded) question.

It wasn’t a (loaded) question.  The program had already noted the concessions Wisconsin’s unions have made (listen for yourself).  The subject was not “Let’s let Wisconsin union members on the air to bitch about their lives”.  It was “what is it right to ask?”

Talk of the Nation gets dozens, maybe hundreds, of calls an hour.  They put maybe 7-8 on the air in a typical hour.  It’s the screener’s job to make sure those few calls are the ones that make for the best, on-topic radio possible.

A good screener knows that there are four kinds of callers; great ones, average ones, boring one and crazy ones.  Listening to people carping, off-topic, while not addressing the show’s topic is boring and off-topic.

She was quite brusque, too.

Screening is a tough job. And I’m gonna bet that there were more than a few “seminar callers, like the person “Phoenix” is quoting, from Wisconsin.

Also, the screener was a government worker.

NPR: not even Nice Polite Republicans any more.

“Everyone who doesn’t kiss our butts must be a Republican”.

I think I get it now.

A: They are uttering anything, in any form, via any medium.

The lefty “alternative” media, exhibiting their traditional independence of thought, seem to have happened en masse, on the story that a group of “White Nationalists” were at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week/weekend.

And – mirabile dictu – they all seem to be running the same bit of video!  What do you suppose the odds were?

“Reporting” on the “story” were Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dumber, Tweedle Dumbest, Tweedle Doh, Tweedlehead, Tweedlebobble, Tweedle Huh?, Tweedle Durr, and pretty much the entire Tweedle Nation.

Unmentioned by any of the Tweedles – the “white supremacist” was sent running with his tail between his legs by CPAC’s conservative attendees.

Further proof that leftyblogs – pretty much all of them – are to be distrusted, then verified.  Then, pretty much without exception, distrusted even more.

Gotta hand it to my radio colleague and Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey.  While he’s a little off the beam on football predictions and seventies music, he’s totally inside Keith Olbermann’s head.

He called it the day after Olbermann walked out of MSNBC; The Worst Pundit In The World, is apparently going to Algore’s “Current” network:

Mr. Olbermann, his representatives and executives from Current TV declined to comment on the move, but they did not deny that the channel, which counts former Vice President

Al Gore as one of its founders, will become at least one partner in Mr. Olbermann’s future media plans.

The presence of Olbie and his staff in the building will double “Current’s” viewership.

This American Life, an NPR program, is a wildly mixed bag of a radio show; it’s frequently excellent, evocative, and sometimes leads you to some wondrous insights.  For a show that is entirely by, for, and about upper-middle-class, college-educated, espresso-guzzling, Prius-driving white liberal hipsters, it’s very often worth the hour it takes to listen.

Still, for those of you in my audience that produce TAL, I feel I need to clarify something.

Funny: The Onion, America’s great parody newspaper.  While it’s not quite as quirky and unpredictable as it was ten years ago (the move to New York from Madison didn’t make the paper any funnier), it’s still a weekly treat.

Not Funny: Listening to The Onion’s editorial panel not only making the sausage (which is mildly interesting)…:

…but analyzing the process to death, like they’re a group of philosophy professors debating the meaning of existence itself.   A bunch of journalism profs at a Columbia forum couldn’t possibly sound more pretentious and joyless.

Note to Onion and TAL staff; you’re not curing cancer.  Lighten up already.

The ongoing squabble over access to the floor for media – partsian alternative media as well as the traditional kind – has been an ongoing battle at the State Capitol for a few years now.

The rhubarb flared up again as the session started earlier month, as left-leaning group-blog “The Uptake” was denied “floor credentials”.

Now, “floor credentials” aren’t the beginning and end of capitol journalism.  David Brauer notes:

While credentials aren’t needed for Capitol press conferences, floor passes are about access. Conversations are only permitted before or after a day’s session, but the immediacy of interviews before lawmakers scatter is as valuable, as is the candor that occasionally results before marching orders are received.

It’s not the be-all of reportage: Senate Sgt-at-Arms Sven Lindquist says press seats on the cramped floor are frequently unoccupied, except during big votes. Still, it’s a tool for the journalistic toolbox.

And it’s a tool that pretty much everyone wants – just in case.  Including The Uptake.

Now, the power to grant credentials, as Brauer notes, used to be a non-partisan activity:

Sgt-at-arms Lindquist says the power to review and grant credentials used to be handled by himself and Senate Secretary Patrick Flahaven. But in recent years, Lindquist says the power moved “elsewhere” — to the majority leader’s office, which is, by definition, partisan.

It’s obviously an issue needing some resolution.  Which is where this piece starts.

Earlier this month, a source close to the GOP’s caucus leadership told me that, while (as Brauer notes) the rules don’t bar “partisan” media, the decision was made to deny credentials to all partisan media, pending the development of a policy.

A few weeks ago, Michael Brodkorb – who handles communications for the majority GOP caucus in the Minnesota Senate, in addition to being the deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP – called me to ask if I’d be interested in working with a group of DFL and GOP staffers, as well as MinnPost writer David Brauer, on coming up with a more or less comprehensive policy on granting floor credentials.

Every state has a different solution to the issue – ranging from free access to the floor to credentialed media in Rhode Island and Montana (and credentials are pretty much given for the asking) to Illinois, which requires a vote of the applicable chamber to allow the  media to take pictures, much less get on the floor.

The goal – near as I can tell so far – is to come up with a transparent policy that’ll give fair access to the Senate floor to media organizations, while coming up with some sort of balance between the establishment media’s vocational need for access and the alt-media’s right to a place at the proverbial table.

I’m honored to have been asked.  My goal is to try to help this group come up with a policy that fairly and transparently gives all media a fair, clear means to cover our Senate, for the good of the entire electorate.

I’ll keep you all posted.  Because even if I didn’t, Brauer certainly would.

Yesterday, after asking the House to hold off on holding hearings on HF1 (Rep. Dan Fabian’s bill to reform state permitting), Governor Dayton released an executive order that will do the same thing.

Well, that’s what the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) will want you to think.

Dayton’s order will do a bunch of the streamlining that HF1 would do…

…with one absolutely key exception. Via Gary Gross at LFR, House Majority Leader Matt Dean said in a statement:

“Today’s executive order is concerning. Just a week ago, Governor Dayton was asking us to slow down and allow more time for public hearings and input.

In other words, the MNGOP reached across the aisle.  They gave a little procedural ground, and worked with the Governor.

And that’s always a mistake.

The Minnesota House has held two public hearings on HF1 and are planning a third hearing on this important legislation. We are concerned that Governor Dayton selected components of HF1 for his Executive Order, watered down some provisions and ignored key areas of reform.

We find his actions today to be counterproductive to the legislative process and his stated commitment to work together on these common ground issues. House Republicans will continue with our previously-announced public process for HF1 and other initiatives designed to make Minnesota’s business climate competitive. We hope Governor Dayton will join us in that endeavor.”

So compare HF1 and the statement.  What’s missing?

Any reference to reforming litigation.

It’s the litigation that not only kills projects, but blows up the price of  private-sector and state projects.

Now – given that Governor Dayton has stacked his administrative appointments with people whose entire public resume involves litigating development to death, what do you suppose his “executive order” is going to be worth?

Oh, yeah – and “executive orders” exist, and are enforced, at the pleasure of the governor.  What the governor orders with a swipe of his pen, he can un-order the same way.

The GOP needs to continue and pass HF1, and tell the Governor “thanks, but no thanks; we’ll stick with the brand name”.

On December 1, I published an excerpt from an email from a GOP recount observer.

Quoting myself:

This email, from a GOP election recount-watcher, has been making the rounds of local conservative activists.  I’m keeping the writer’s name off the record for now.

Emphasis is added by me:

Well, it’s been a good (better) day today here at Hennepin County for the recount. Lots of notable errors in judgment…

For instance, we found one precinct with ALL Dayton ballots challenged (103 total) that appeared to be a “mass” group of blank ballots run thru without a judge’s signature – all in a row. Shows how easily certain folks of a party’s persuasion can cheat so easily – and have it counted?

Let’s repeat that for those of you who glaze over:  103 votes, run through in a group, without a judge’s signature, apparently consecutively.

I asked the source of this email earlier this week what the resolution of this issue was.  The source wasn’t entirely clear on how things turned out: she or he sent me this message:

I think it was 102-103 ballots in Hennepin County (some precinct) that looked suspicious, and were run through the machine and counted in the total. What was believed was it happened after the polls (and machines) were closed and counted w/ a tape already generated…. Hence, the difference in the counts from registered voters vs. the machine counts…I was told the sequence and appearance of these ballots looked suspicious and forged, and now that I think about it, I remember one of the primary reasons they weren’t allowed was they were not properly signed off by the appropriate parties – yet, counted. If my memory serves me right, they were taken out of the totals once discovered.

Now, I’ve been getting regular, frequent emails for the past six weeks from a regular reader who is also a supporter of our current election system and, I’d suspect, of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.   According to this person, it would be impossible for this scenario to have happened; that that’s just not how canvassing and recounts work.

That, of course, is one of the problems of blogging; when one is an actual, full-time, employed journalist, one has time to learn enough about the subject about which one is writing to comment on it with more literacy than when one has other things going on in life.

So OK, fair enough.  I’m way too buried with personal and day-job business to really dig into it all that much at the moment.  I guess, at least as regards this particular episode, the iron-clad integrity of the Henco elections staff, of Mark Ritchie, and of everyone involved is unimpeachable.  Until a better explanation drops into my lap. at any rate.

Which it’ll have to do, because – and this is an admission against interest – I have a hard time concentrating on that sort of anal-retentive, pointillistic, nit-picky, left-brain sort of thing.  God bless those who can – but I can’t.  Call it a learning disability, and a politically-imprudent one at that, but my brain just tunes out the finer points of the mechanics of recounts.  There’s a reason I’m not an actuary, an accountant, or a wedding planner.

And that’s that, I guess.

(more…)

I always loved this bit from South Park:

Oh, that Cartman. Spoofing people who “are just asking questions”. Funny funny stuff.

———-

Apropos absolutely nothing; about two months ago, three months ago a group of 20-odd Somalis were busted for running a prostitution ring in Minneapolis.  The ring allegedly forced young Somali girls into prostitution.

Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent lives in Minneapolis.

This raises questions:  Was Andy Birkey complicit in the prostitution ring?

No, I’m not being inflammatory.  I’m just asking questions.

Oh, yeah – Birkey has written his 24th article about Bradlee Dean in the past 53 weeks.

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, Inc. (YCR), the Annandale-based hard rock ministry run by Bradlee Dean and Jake McMillian, set up trusts with help from a ministry in Oregon which has been a target of the IRS investigations for setting up tax avoidance schemes all over the country, Karl Bremer at Ripple in Stillwater reports.

While writing “How do you know Karl Bremer is full of crap?  His fingers are moving over the keyboard?” would be an ad-hominem, his history of being a ranting crank raises questions.

But I digress.  Here’s a serious question:  huh?

What sort of trust did YCR set up?  Was it legal?  Were YCR’s business dealings among those being investigated by the IRS?

Indeed, what is the IRS investigating?  And did YCR’s association with the “ministry in Oregon” happen to coincide in any way with anything that the IRS investigated?

I’m just asking questions (and adding emphasis to Birkey’s quotes).

Dean and YCR dismantled the work done by Glen Stoll and the Embassy of Heaven for their ministry and even took their case against Stoll to district court in 2008, but the arrangement raises questions about whether Dean and his ministry were trying to avoid paying their rightful share of taxes.

Birkey’s “just asking questions”.

We’ll come back to that.

Documents filed in Minnesota’s 10th District Court outline the arrangement set up by YCR with the help of Stoll. Bradlee Dean, whose real name is Bradley Dean Smith, and Jake McMillian, whose real name is Jake MacAuley, took classes from Stoll and paid him $6,500 to set up “established, exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable and assignable ministerial trusts” that would allow them to operate as a “‘free church’ that would be invulnerable to state regulation and control.”

As part of the deal, Smith was given an identification card from Stoll’s Embassy of Heaven that affirmed that, “On file is a signed statement by Bradley Smith renouncing allegiance to the world and declaring citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

So let me ask some questions – remember, I’m just asking questions, because questions were raised:

• Was this “trust” illegal?
• In fact, did tax laws in the early part of the 2000s make these sort of trusts a common and attractive means for religious ministries to handle their taxes and finances?
• Did IRS laws change in the past five years, making various forms of non-profit status more useful?
• Did YCR actually “evade” taxes?
• If it could be showed I deducted my mortgage interest or inreimbursed medical expenses, would I be “evading taxes” according to Andy Birkey?
• I know Andy Birkey and Karl Bremer are just “raising questions” – but do they have any actual evidence that YCR and Bradlee Dean didn’t actually pay taxes they were supposed to?
• Any evidence at all?  Or are they just “raising questions”?

Remember – I’ m just asking questions.  Because questions were raised.  So I’m asking them.

Stoll also told his clients not to pay income taxes or employment taxes and to not file tax returns. And the ministry seemed to take that advice. According to the group’s 990 forms, it stopped reporting its activities to the IRS in 2003, the same year Smith signed his citizenship card with the Embassy of Heaven. It would resume filing its tax returns in 2008.

And was this illegal under the applicable laws at the time?    Is YCR under investigation of any kind, by anyone (other than Karl Bremer)?

Again – I’m just asking questions.

By 2005, Stoll and his clients were under investigation for tax fraud by the Department of Justice. As Bremer notes, Stoll has already been fined $50,000, is in violation of an injunction, and his arrest has been sought.

“People who buy into tax-fraud schemes are buying nothing but trouble — past due tax bills with interest and penalties and the possibility of criminal prosecution,” said Eileen J. O’Connor, Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division. “The Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service are committed to stopping the promotion of tax fraud.”

Well, that’s interesting.

Is Ms. O’Connor commenting about YCR?

Why, no – indeed, it seems Karl Bremer has clipped a quote from several other stories that used the same quote. Now, I’m just asking questions here – but isn’t the quote framed in such a way as to make it look like Ms. O’Conner “said” the quote to Birkey?  As opposed to Birkey and Bremer clipping it, with context grossly obscured, from several other stories?  Hasn’t the Minnesota Independent gotten into trouble for this sort of thing before?

Just asking questions.

By 2008, Smith and MacAuley began to unravel the complicated tax-free trust that was being administered by Stoll. As Bremer reports:

According to court documents, Smith’s and MacAulay’s attorney advised them to sever all ties with Stoll, demand his resignation from their trusts and return all property from the trusts. Stoll refused, and on December 9, 2008, a summons and petition was attempted to be served on Stoll’s address, where a person there “refused to accept the documents” and “slammed the door.”

Wait – so after “asking questions” that, if framed as a statement, would have sounded a lot like an accusation (“tax evasion”), Birkey and Bremer’s story’s source is…records of a lawsuit that YCR’s principals filed against their allegedly fraudulent ex-advisor…

…er, he was an ex-advisor, right?  Wait – Birkey’s story is so unclear, I have no idea what’s going on.  When did YCR have its trust with Stoll?  When did YCR break off the relationship?  Why?  What does it have to do with the quesitons about Birkey’s links to Somali prostitution?

On March 27, 2009, District Court Judge Stephen Halsey granted Old Paths Church, Inc. and YCR, Inc. their motion for a summary judgment against Stoll that terminated Stoll’s trusts, removed Stoll as trustee, transferred assets from the trusts back to the two original entities, and awarded attorneys fees plus the $6,500 they paid Stoll to create the sham ministerial trusts.

I’m getting a headache, now.   Would someone provide the who, what, when, where, why and how of some of these allegations?

The Minnesota Independent examined some of Smith’s financial dealings in 2009 when new IRS 990 forms showed that he and his band mates were taking a ministerial housing allowance despite his organization being a religious non-profit as opposed to a church. Those housing allowances are meant only for “duly ordained” members of the clergy. Smith has refused to answer questions related to his ordination or which church his organization belongs to.

OK, I’m shaking off my headache; I have more questions.  To ask.

• So since the court case against Stoll – whose relationship to Dean and YCR is the subject of Birkey’s entire article – happened before 2009, what does this have to do with any “tax evasion” scheme?
• Does Birkey know what “duly ordained” means?  No, I don’t either.  I’m just asking questions.  Is the “due”-ness of Dean’s ordination a legal issue?  If so, how?  Under what part of the IRS code?  Is anyone but Karl Bremer alleging that Dean is operating illegally?
• Is Dean legally obliged to answer questions about his employment to Andy Birkey?
• Given the geneology of the O’Connor quote, above, did Birkey even ask Dean?  To whom did Dean “refuse” to answer?  Details?  Again, I’m just asking questions.

I’m just…well, you know.

In 2008, Smith and his sidekick MacAuley, greatly increased their compensation and housing allowance. According to the group’s most recent 990 filing, Smith was paid $51,303 salary and $45,887 for the housing allowance, raking in $97,190. MacAuley’s compensation was a bit less coming in at $66,897 in 2008.

So?

I mean, I’ve met Brad and Jake.  Brad’s got five kids, and he works like a sled dog.

Did he pay taxes?

Just asking.

Dean has not responded to repeated request for information about his ministry or a weekend request for comment on his association with Stoll.

And why would he?

(Just a question).

Dean and his ministry have close ties to the Republican Party and GOP officials and candidates including gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer,

If I had shown that that particular claim was a lie, would Andy Birkey stop making the claim…

…well, doy, I guess my answer’s right there!

Since I’m just asking questions, I talked with Bradlee Dean.  We both noted that Birkey was “raising questions”.

“If the question was “did Bradlee Dean pay his taxes”, the answer is “yes””, he said.

Well, enough of that.  All those questions give me a headache.

I just love South Park.  Let’s watch that clip again!

He’s so funny.

UPDATE: Is Andy Birkey trying to concoct some grandiloquent link between the GOP on the one hand and a shadowy conspiracy of Christianist Tom-Petters-wannabees, to appease the appetites of his lords and masters at Media Matters (who pull the strings behind the Center for “Independent” Media, which controls every facet of the operations of its “independent” websites like the Mindy for dirt?

This article raises questions.

UPDATE 2:  I should start a bet pool for how many articles about Brad Dean that Birkey writes this years.  Last year was 23; I think the over/under in a non-election year will be more like 18.

Place  your bets.

I’m just asking questions here.

UPDATE 3:  I see that that bit above wasn’t actually a question.

Perhaps it’s the circle of radio life.  The First Team of the Northern Alliance gets shown the door…

…and Mark Dayton takes to the air:

Gov. Mark Dayton plans to do a governor’s radio show soon.

“I wish I could be on the air somewhere tomorrow,” Dayton said. “I can’t wait to get on the air. It is just a question of where and going through the proper procedure.

Dayton having a weekly radio show follows a tradition of past governors. Both Govs. Jesse Ventura and Tim Pawlenty had Friday morning shows on WCCO that were required, and sometimes interesting, listening for political geeks.

So gubernatorial radio will go from vain, to vapid, to…uh, is there a synonym for odd that starts with ‘v’?

Ventura and Pawlenty’s shows had their moments, but “fireside chats” they were not.  Ventura used the forum as a ricktey soapbox from which to deliver a folding chair to his opponents while Pawlenty’s often politics-lite interviews were professional but dryer than a Martini in the Sahara.  Unless Dayton wants to reminisce on his Haight-Ashburyesque days, 60 minutes of dead air might be more entertaining.

MITCH ADDS:  While First Ringer would have no reason to know this, I’ll add that the First Team wasn’t “shown the door”.  There were some revenue-driven schedule changes; management and John and Brian couldn’t agree on a change to the First Team’s schedule that worked for everyone.   There were no aspersions cast on either side; the logistics and timing for both the station and John and Brian couldn’t be made to match up.

It stinks; I was one of the First Team’s biggest fans.  But them’s the breaks in Freebie Radio.

The Democrats nationwide are holding a pair of sevens with a king high.  In Minnesota, the DFL’s holding a couple of four and nothing much more.

As they say in law school (or so I’m told) if the facts are against you, argue the law.  If the law is against you, argue facts.  If both are against you, argue like hell.

The climate is against the Dems (suspect polling about “voters wanting centrism” notwithstanding).  They just lost big in one of the most epic two-year turnarounds in electoral history.  They stand, quite possibly (if the GOP doesn’t screw up) to lose the Senate in 2012, and maybe the Presidency to boot (although it’s way too early to even feel to optimistic yet; we have a ways to go). They are gathered behind a very weak president whose primary platform has been “I’m not George W. Bush”, yet whose only successful policies were cribbed from his predecessor.

The facts – the electorate – are against them.  The “law” – time, really, in the form of the a huge number of Senators coming up for re-election in 2012 – is against them.

So they’re going to argue like hell.

And at this, the Dems have some huge advantages; a compliant and in-the-bag media, a huge public class, and masses of voters, especially in big cities, who are dependent on government either as employees or clients.

My prediction:  Look for the Dems, nationwide and in Minnesota, to start pushing a series of memes – I’ve been calling them “chanting points” on this blog, and having a lot of fun with it – to try to give the media and their sound-bite-addled acolytes something to chant.

Here are my predictions:

“Tea Baggers Are Teh Crazee”:  That one’s already started; Jerry Nadler’s outburst yesterday (accompanied by some too-perfectly-timed media appearances by the likes of Dahlia Lithwick) on the “Fetishization of the Constitution” is a part of this; trying to frame constitutional originalism as some form of snake handling.  Watch for this meme to work its way down through Media Matters and the leftyblogs (pardon the redundancy), through Jon Stewart and the lefty chattering classes (ibid), and countless editorial pages.  Because actually showing that originalism actually is a pseudo-religious fetish isn’t important; creating the impression is.

“Disagreement Equals Disintegration”: Look for any disagreement among the conservative bloc – which is not a bloc, but a coalition of social and fiscal conservatives and newly-minted libertarians – to be portrayed as “the disintegration of the Tea Party”.  Look for rumors of the disintegration of the Tea Party to crash ashore about Wednesday of every news week.   Because the disintegration isn’t important; creating the impression that it is, is.

“There Is a Huge, Throbbing Center Out there”:  We saw a dress rehearsal of this in Minnesota, where the media set up Tom Horner as a viable “centrist Republican”, notwithstanding the fact that his policies fit in better as a moderate DFLer.  All through the summer, the DFL and media (PTR) tried to put purple lipstick on the blue pig.  Did Horner take 8,000 votes away from Emmer?  We will never know – but the tactic is the important part.  We’re seeing this already; the very days the new US House and Minnesota Legislature were sworn in, the media trumpeted polls of dubious geneology claiming the American People were begging for more centrism.  And you know how polls work these days.

More?

Discuss.

Sources at the State Capitol inform me that the Senate Sergeant at Arms office is denying press credentials to all partisan news outlets.

This most notably includes The Uptake, a left-leaning videoblog that, in the past session, had more press credentials than any other media outlet except the Pioneer Press.

UPDATE: The source reminds me that The Uptake – and any other news outlet – will have the same access to press conferences that they’ve always had, and will have the same access to one-time daily credentials they’ve always had.  They will, however, not have regular access to the Senate floor during the session.

UPDATE 2: If you recall, the Uptake’s tenure on the Capitol Press Corps has been a rocky one.

UPDATE 3:  MNPublius’ Jeff Rosenberg tweets:

Wow. The MNGOP is throwing organizations it doesn’t like out of the Capitol? That’s horrible. #stribpol

I’ll hasten to remind Jeff that all partisan news outlets have been denied credentials to the floor.

All of them.  Not just “organizations it doesn’t like”, although that’s the sort of conclusion most of us expect leftybloggers to leap to in coming days.

This is as opposed to the last (DFL-controlled) session, when The Uptake was granted credentials, but Dan Ochsner of St. Cloud conservative station KNSI was denied credentials, purely (say my sources) because of his ideology (and the fact that he’d run for Senate against Tarryl Clark).

More momentarily.

We’ve established this for quite some time – DFL Minnesotans speak a very, very different language from Real Minnesotans.

Case in point – Dave Mindeman at mnpACT, doing his fifth annual “Ten Worst Political Persons In Minnesota of 2010” award (an awarad that lacks the cool, polished cachet of the Shooties, and which Mindeman admits is a riff on Olberman, which is sort of like admitting you’re copying diarrhea).  As a public service, I will use my patience, knowledge, and access to the DFL Dictionary to translate Mindeman’s piece from DFL into regular English.

You’re welcome:

There are some who don’t like the negative connotation…that’s why for the past couple of years I have also done a 10 Best list as well. But it does give me a chance to reflect on what I see in Minnesota politics…and believe me, a lot of it reflects the dark side.

Translation: “Dissent from my world view is evil.  But don’t call me McCarthyist!”.

Looking over the past lists, the range goes from that Lizard people guy to Katherine Kersten to the Star Tribune. Some people are consistently on the list so you will see some familiar names. Some are one shot wonders, but each year a crop of people always appear that affect political discourse in Minnesota.

Translation: “Unlike calling people I disagree with “the worst person”, which is just lovely for “discourse in Minnesota”.

Here is the “Worst” List for 2010:

10. Brad Brandon of the Berean Bible Baptist Church. (Note: he also wins the alliteration award). Brandon is a Hastings pastor who decided to defy the IRS and endorse an entire slate of candidates (mostly Republican with a sprinkling of Constitution) directly from his pulpit. He challenge anyone to file a complaint (and one has been), and proceeded to preach his sermon on the need to elect those God-fearing Republicans. You have to wonder what Erik Paulsen did to get on God’s bad side — he wasn’t endorsed.

Translation: “Dissent and civil disobedience were the supreme civic virtues – until January 20, 2009″.

9. Randy Brown (SD 56 GOP Webmaster). To the tune of “Who Let the Dogs Out”, Mr. Brown thought it would be funny to profile a video on his BPOU’s website that portrayed Democratic women in a less than flattering light…..while putting Republican women on display as the sex objects Mr. Brown seemed to be fantasizing about.

Translation: “Because goodness knows liberals would never, ever, ever act like a bunch of giggly schoolboys and catty cheerleaders. Darn obscure Republican webmasters , acting out that purely-GOP trait!”.

8. Zygi Wilf (Vikings Owner). Zygi was #6 on last year’s list and he is back again…for the same reason. The State of Minnesota is dealing with a monster deficit,

Translation: “If you damn teabaggers don’t cover every damn nickel of the Autopilot Budget, I will call you names!”

7. Minnesota Majority. This GOP sympathizer group seems to have made a mission out of discrediting a very good state election system.

Translation: “Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie…”

6. Target Corp. In the “what were they thinking” department, Target Corp’s donations to the Tom Emmer campaign became a very public affair. And what’s worse, a carefully honed public image of a gay friendly corporation was nearly destroyed.

Translation: “And Target’s market cap went…er, wait, it kept pace and/or slightlty exceeded the retail sector since July, when the whole astroturf flap got started.  Never mind.”

Are corporate tax breaks really that important?

Translation: “And where did all those manufacturing and warehouse jobs with Target, 3M, Best Buy, Ecolab, Medtronic, Boston Sci, Minnesota Public Radio and every single other signficant manufacturere in Minnesota go, anyway?  Maybe we need a law to keep them from leaving!  Damn that Tim Pawlenty!”

Frankly, the idea that corporations could come close to making a “political” list like this is a little disturbing, but the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has changed all of that forever.

Translation: “Because Goddess forbid that the Teachers Union and the SEIU have any competition in the marketplace of paid-for-ideas!”

5. John Kline. Congressman Kline will soon take over the chairmanship of the Education and Labor Committee in the House. And along with that will be his total disregard for union rights and his big buck contributions from the for-profit education corporations. Along with the energy companies and the banking industry, etc, etc. He has nothing but disdain for health care reform as well as disdain for his own district.

Translation: “HEY!  ALL YOU TEABAGGING MORONS IN THE SECOND DISTRICT!  Don’t you know what’s GOOD for you?”

Roads and bridges in the 2nd get nothing from John Kline because he’s against earmarks. He’s saving us money… oh, wait, no he isn’t. Our money gets spent in other districts.

Translation: “The system is more important than its consequences.  Long live the system!”

4. Tony Sutton (Chair of the MN GOP). The provocative chairman of the MN GOP managed to open his mouth at every inopportune moment.

Translation: “My life would be so much nicer if Teabaggers just shut up and let me run everything”.

If his cohorts had worked as hard at real facts and figures as they did at distortions, they might have pulled out at least one of those statewide races.

Translation: “As opposed to the fact-chocked campaign that Alliance For A Better Minnesota ran!  I just get tingly thinking about it!”.

3. MN Chamber of Commerce. Outside of a few token Democratic endorsements, the MN Chamber was hell bent on reversing legislative power in Minnesota.

Translation: “Don’t those idiot wingnut teabaggers know what’s good for them?  Taxing business more makes it easier to do busienss!  Er – doesn’t it?”

2. Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty is on this list because he has flat out ruined Minnesota.

Translation: “Never mind the near-lowest in the nation unemployment – he RUINED us!  RUINED, I say!”

He has left us with an incredible deficit.

Translation: “And that fiscally-responsible DFL tried SO hard to control spending!  Really!

He presided over the biggest transfer of tax burden (state to local governement) in history.

Translation: “And then he forced all those cities to spend, spend, spend!  He’s a WITCH, I tell you!”

He watched a bridge fall down and then he vetoed transportation funding at every opportunity.

Translation: “Why, if we had finished the Central Corridor and built a network of ethanol stations, that bridge would still be standing!”

1. Michele Bachmann. Michele has topped this list for 3 years in a row

Translation: “I ran out of ideas”.

Glad to help.

Happy New Year, Dave!

It’s time once again for a tradition unlike any other; the 2010 edition of the Twin Cities’ foremost blog award ceremony – the Shooties!

Every year for the Shooties, we honor the worst – and occasionally the best – of Minnesota blogging. And this year is no exception – only more so!

So without any further ado, let’s move on to the awards!  We’ll kick things off with…:

The Dan Rather “Fake Is Accurate!” Award For Journalistic Ethics: This award goes to Erin Maye, “Intern” at “The Uptake”, a left-“leaning” video “news” blog.  While being busted mangling context on a number of stories, Ms. Maye – a “Peace Studies” student – tweeted “I’m Editing.  I feel important because I can make people say things they may not have said.  Muhahaha”.  Prediction:  She will run Gawker Media by 2012.

The Tiger Beat Celebrity Saturation Award:   This year’s TBCSA, given for the year’s best example of “news” coverage that combined slavering saturation with excellence in contextual laxity, goes to the Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey and his ongoing obsession with Bradlee Dean, ultra-mega-super-di-duper fundamentalist evangelist and talk radio host (whose program, “Sons of Liberty”, follows mine at AM1280 every Saturday).  Birkey wrote about Dean no less thatn 23 times in the past year.  But the coverage wasn’t just of a level of saturation that made Larry Jacobs sit up and go “er, wait, he’s overquoted”.  It took vast liberties with context and attribution:

• Birkey wrote in high dudgeon that Michele Bachmann and Tom Emmer would “appear in Dean’s documentary”, My War, without bothering to learn that the “appearances” were from shots of news clippings (or without thinking his audience needed to know).
• Birkey claimed that Emmer gave “financial support” to Dean’s ministry, without disclosing that the “Support” was the purchase of a $250 table at a non-political teen outreach dinner – long before Emmer was a candidate.
• Birkey claimed that Dean said Moslem nations had more integrity than Christian ones because they executed gays. It was a lie.

And more.

The “Dump Bachmann” Award For Unintended Consequences:  Campaigning in the GOP-leaning Sixth District, Tarryl Clark wrote a piece…

…on the Daily Kos.

No better way to paint one as a “reasonable centrist” than writing for “Democratic Underground Lite”.

It probably helped take an eight point race and make it a twelve-pointer.

The Joe McCarthy Trophy For Resurrecting The Letter And Spirit of Joe McCarthy: This one – given for bringing McCarthyism back from the dead – goes to Minneesota “Progressive” Project’s Joe Bodell for his January plea to least think about treating Tea Party sympathies and speaking out against The One and other forms of dissent as “sedition“.  I guess dissent isn’t patriotic anymore!

The Abe Gibron Trophy: After years of humiliating itself by running a smug, ill-informed, badly-written, phoned-in, rote, and talking-points-driven column by Nick Coleman, the Strib changed things up, giving the gig to Jon Tevlin, who turned the column into a smug, ill-informed, badly-written, phoned-in, rote, and talking-points-driven column.

The Jeff Fecke “The Male Client Is Obviously Guilty” Award For Egregious Misandry: This year’s winner is Rachel Nygaard, who took the facts of Rep. Tom Hackbarth’s arrest (he and his carry-permitted handgun were picked up by the Saint Paul Police, inadvertently parked by the Saint Paul office of Infanticide Mart, where he admitted his was having a bit of a clingy snit over a woman’s excuse for begging off on a date; a sign the guy needs to get a grip, not a crime.  So far.  There was no evidence that Hackbarth acted in any way upon that snit, by the way, other than by driving to Saint Paul which is, by the way, also not a crime).  Nygaaard extrapolated this into a Lifetime Movie, with a slavering man beating down a woman’s door and shooting her in a fit of testosterone-induced rage, potentially.

The runner up?  Fecke himself!  After getting this award named after him for his performance in the Duke Lacrosse case, where Fecke was prominent among “feminists” who tried, convicted, castrated and executed three college guys who, it turned out, were falsely accused of rape and railroaded by an unethical prosecutor and a media that looked at the case – a black “victim”, a bunch of smug, rich white boy “perps”, and saw dollar signs.

Well, he’s baaaack with the whole “I, Jury” bit, in re Julian Assange’s very curious “sexual assault” accusations.  (UPDATE: The American Petard exchange reports that petard prices are skyrocketing; those petards are getting hoisted and blown up so fast, production can’t keep up with capacity anymore).

The Yarmagh The Destroyer Award For Rolling A “9” For “Charisma”, Even With An Elivsh Sorcerer Character: A twofer for Joe Bodell, who learned that “cleric” is actually the singular for clergy, rather than a smear against Muslims by the big, bad conservative media. Well, we hope he learned it, anyway.

The Robin Marty Award For Calm, Dispassionate Fact-Checking: Andy Birkey is a repeat winner, here, for his piece impugning the Tea Party for a “threatening message to the local AFSCME office from a regional Tea Party leader” that happened to be neither threatening nor from anyone that anybody in the regional Tea Party leadership had ever heard of, at all (not that Birkey ever bothered to check, much less report that).

The National Concussion Association Poster Child For Blogging While Suffering From A Crippling Brain Injury: Barbara O’Brien from Mahablog.  (UPDATE:  I’m sorry – O’Brien doesn’t suffer from a brain injurty.  She’s just blood-curdlingly stupid).

The Walter Duranty Award: Ezra “The Constitution Is Haaard” Klein and Matt Yglesias, who proved themselves almost as stupid as O’Brien.

The Baghdad Bob Award: This clear winner this year goes to the “Humphrey Institute’s” Professor Larry Jacobs. While the Star-Tribune’s “Minnesota Poll” remained a joke (the virtual-tie Governor race was portrayed as a seven point blowout, but only by telling Minnesota that Democrats were a quarter more likely to vote – in the most GOP year in recent history), the Humphrey Institute poll released just before the election showed it as a twelve-point massacre.  A post-election analysis showed that the Humphrey’s polling over-sampled DFL-heavy areas, but didn’t weight for that oversample the way every credible poll does.  The Twin Cities media may try to offer a defense against the charge that Jacobs, and they, are trying to foment a “bandwagon effect” with the front-page play these polls get in all the regional media – but they haven’t offered it yet.

The runner-up for this award, though, goes to the entire Twin Cities media, into whose coverage of the governor’s race the Humphrey and Strib polls neatly fit.  Their performance – all of them, every one – in this past election was nothing short of shameful.  Faced with a DFL candidate who had embarassed the state in the US Senate, and had multiple run-ins with alcoholism and crippling depression in the past five years, and whose (entirely smear-oriented) campaign was financed by a shady, utterly unexamined consortium of unions and the Dayton Family (including Dayton himself), and whose chemical and mental health state remained utterly examined (barring a perfunctory Rachel Stassen-Berger puff piece run long before the non-wonk voter even knew there was a governor race coming up), the Twin Cities media gamboled and cavorted about with stories of Tom Emmer’s ancient drinking-and-driving convictions, a malaprop about waiter tips (which was not even inaccurate), and whether the post-Citizens United end of the ban on corporate donations (that weren’t from unions or trust fund babies) would end democracy as we knew it.  It was the year that it became perfectly clear that they see their mission to be to comfort the DFL and afflict the MNGOP.

And Finally, The Charles Townsend Award, the keystone award of these entire festivities.  Charles Townsend was a British Parliamentarian in the 1770’s, whose response to the growing “Tea Party” in the colonies…

“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

…was worthy of Larry Pogemiller or Nick Coleman.

This year’s award goes to Governor-Elect Dayton (and, really, by extension every single person who supported him).  The Dayton budget plan was built on a lie, and – quite simply – can not succeed, even notwithstanding the fact that it’s dead on arrival at the GOP Legislature.  Support for Dayton is support for the idea that we, The People, are serfs whose labors exist to support government first.  Then our families.

So for the first time, about 43% of Minnesota wins the award!

Congratuations!

And we’ll see you next year!  Because Goddess knows there’ll be material!

The meme made the rounds of the Sorosphere over the past few weeks, yet again; “Fox News viewers are less well-informed”.

Since it was a meme from the Sorosphere, I figured it had to be crap.

As always, that sense was correct:

It’s about twenty minutes worth of video, but it disembowels the “Fox Viewers Are Teh Dumm” meme.  Again.

Reminds me of how leftybloggers hand aortic dissections when they got the word that Limbaugh listeners were better-informed about current events than network TV viewers, and even with NPR listeners.

Moral of the story:  if a leftyblogger makes a factual assertion, assume it’s wrong, either factually or logically.  It’ll rarely steer  you wrong.

Counterpoint:  Ezra Klein.

No, really.  That bad.

Conclusion:  Thesis debunked.

I started reading a couple of Minnesota liberal blogs yesterday, with an aim toward perhaps addressing some of their arguments as the session gets underway…

…and I stopped.  It just got too depressing.

Minnesota liberal bloggers – many, many of them – have real serious trouble with simple logic; with the rhetorical equivalent of subject-verb agreement.

About a year ago, I started a series of posts called “Logic for Leftybloggers”; it was, as I sketched it out, a 25 part bit on some of the basics of logic – little things like “why a tu quoque argument (which makes up about 40% of leftyblog posts) makes you sound like you need more fiber in your diet” or “how ridicule isni’t technically evidence” or “when your argument includes more red herrings than the entire Norwegian fishing fleet, you’re really only convincing fellow ijjits”.

But I shelved it, largely because searching through the backlog for the examples was, again, just too damn depressing.

Still, my little bout (or perhaps “spasm”) of reading leftyblogs has made me think; maybe that’ll be my New Years’ gift to discourse; dust off the series and post it during the coming year.  At the very best, it’ll improve the level of discussion at least some.   At worst?  Someone’s body may physically reject its own brain; I’d hate to have that on my conscience, but I am a giver.

I gotta think about this a bit.

Common Cause Minnesota  (CCM) is a “non-partisan” PAC that exists, in its entirety, to advance liberal causes and, when they can’t manage that, to retard conservative ones.

Oh, they tart the message up like a twenty-dollar hooker:  “Common Cause Minnesota is a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen’s lobby dedicated to improving the way state government operates. We have helped pass Minnesota’s most important ethics and campaign finance reforms“, is what they say on their website.  And everywhere, in all their communication – transparency.  Transparency, transparancy, transparency.  They want “Transparency” in government.  Or so they say.

We’ll come back to that.

As I pointed out last September, in the wake of  finding out that “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” was spending an avalanche of funding from not-so-transparent sources like Mark Dayton, his ex-wife and a slew of unions, through via a fiscal shell game that Derek Brigham mapped out as well as anyone – certainly better than anyone in the mainstream media…

…Common Cause had demanded an investigation of…

…Campaign for Minnesota’s future, and a donation it got from the Republican Governors Assocation.

And for this campaign, Common Cause went big, going to the state Campaign Finance Board.

CCM’s announcement certainly set the stakes high (emphasis added by me):

WHAT:           Common Cause has uncovered an elaborate scheme by three entities to hide political contributions.

WHEN:           Thursday, September 30, 2010
11:00 a.m.

WHERE:         Room 125, State Capitol

Common Cause Minnesota will outline a major complaint that it has filed with the Campaign Finance Disclosure Board alleging that three different entities circumvented Minnesota disclosure law and failed to properly disclose large contributions.  The parties involved could face civil penalties totaling $5.1 million and criminal prosecution.

###

Whew!  Scary!

And when the CFB released its results, CCM spun it like it was huge news; Mike Dean, CCM’s president, tweeted:

Campaign Finance Board finds that Minnesota’s Future, LLC Violated State Law:

Of course, like everything Mike Dean and CCM say and do, it was a bunch of twaddle.   The Minnesota Campaign Finance Board released its conclusions.

Among CCM’s many charges was that the Republican Governors Association didn’t disclose its donors according to Minnesota law.

It was true; they did it better than Minnesota law!

The Board notes that the RGA disclosed all of its sources of income to the IRS under the requirements applicable to organizations registered under IRC section 527. The timing of that disclosure is different than what is required in Minnesota but the level of itemization is greater than Minnesota requires. This observation is noted because it suggests that avoidance of disclosure was not a motive for the RGA when it made its contribution to Minnesota Future, LLC.

Conclusions from CFB investigation – again, with emphasis added:

Based on the above analysis, and the submissions of the Complainant and the other parties, the Board makes the following:

Findings Concerning Probable Cause

1. There is probable cause to believe that Minnesota Future, LLC, and State Fund for Economic Growth, both Minnesota corporations, operated as political committees as defined by statute and were required to register with the Board within ten days of accepting contributions or making expenditures in excess of $100.

2. There is no probable cause to believe that the failure of Minnesota Future, LLC, or State Fund For Economic Growth to register was done with the knowledge and understanding the corporation was, in fact, required to register.

3. Minnesota Future, LLC, and State Fund for Economic Growth have registered with and reported to the Board retroactive to the date they first accepted contributions in excess of $100. They have completed their registration and reporting obligations. Consequently, there is no probable cause to believe that an ongoing violation exists.

So there was no substantial violation of any kind.  It was a technical violation of a provision in state election finance law that’s not all that clear; no harm was done, no fines were levied (they very frequently are in these cases); Minnesota Forward didn’t get so much as a stern “you watch what you’re doing, now!”  No “criminal charges”, no “multimillion dollar fines”.

Nothing.

CCM’s selective complaining was incongruous enough to make even liberal-in-good-standing Paul Demko ask:

But Common Cause did not file a similar complaint against WIN Minnesota, a DFL-aligned organization that has been helping pay for attack ads against GOP nominee Tom Emmer. The group received a similar $250,000 contribution from the Democratic Governors Association (DGA).

Dean said WIN Minnesota is in compliance with the law because it’s organized under a different section of the tax code and has a broader mandate then simply influencing electoral politics. But he conceded that WIN Minnesota is no more transparent in revealing the source of the DGA money then its conservative counterpart. “The issue is one organization followed the law and the other organization did not,” Dean said.

Except that MNForward did, according to the Campaign Finance Board – and if WIN Minnesota (one of the maze of shell groups underwrting “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”) did, it was only by the stretchiest definition of “the letter of the law”, and I doubt even that.

So you might be reading this, and thinking – “Wow – Common Cause sounds like  a bunch of weasels”.

Now, now.  Not yet, they don’t.

Read this bit first (again with emphasis added):

At issue is a $429,000 contribution that the Republican Governors Association funneled to the group, which has been running television commercials bashing DFL gubernatorial nominee Mark Dayton. Common Cause argues in the complaint that Minnesota’s Future was required to disclose the names of donors who contributed to the Republican Governors Association.

Leaving aside the fact that the Campaign Finance Board rejected the premise that Minnesota’s future did anything wrong, I’d like you to check this out.  It’s an excerpt from Page 4 of Common Cause’s 2008 IRS Form 990 – disclosures.

Can’t read the names?

Get used to it.  There are eight pages of donations, a total of 44 of them, totalling over $600,000.

For one year.

And not one name.

For a group that alleges itself to be all about “transparency in politics”.

The lesson from this?  Whenever “Common Cause” pops up in this state’s political discourse, they need to be pelted with rhetorical rocks and garbage.  They exist only as a front group for the DFL; they are fundamentally dishonest.

I’ve invited CCM “president” Mike Dean to appear on the Northern Alliance Radio Network to discuss his various charges, and defend CCM against the charge that they are lying to the people.  Repeatedly.  For almost three months.

I expect better from responsible adults with non-risible points of view.

Place your bets.

Paul Schmelzer at the Mindy doesn’t address rumors that the Soros-supported “news” front is about to change its name to “Dump Bradlee Dean” – but he does give lots of Xs and Os to the new “loose mores blow up stores” campaigns at Walmart and the Mall:

Today Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Walmart’s participation, according to a DHS press release. The nation’s largest retailer will have 230 stores participating immediately, with as many as 588 eventually taking part. The Mall of America’s participation was announced last week; it’ll be joined by “the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country.”

The expanded campaign, unveiled at a mall ceremony last week, will include print and video advertisements throughout the complex.

So – posting terror warnings in public places is good?

Well, now that it’s a Democrat!  Let’s go back a few years:

During the 2004 elections, Kiffmeyer made national headlines when she decided to post terrorist warning signs at polling places throughout Minnesota urging voters to be wary of people appearing at precincts with “shaved head[s] or short hair” who “smell of unusual herbal/flower water or perfume,” wear baggy clothing or appear to be whispering to themselves.

So when Janet Napolitano tells you to watch out for those crazy neighbors (especially if they’re tax protesters, second amendment people, pro-lifers or Tea Partiers, naturally), it’s a good thing, but when a Republican does it…

…well, we all know how it works, don’t we?

In a bizarre perversion of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inspirational platitude, the only thing today’s Minnesota DFL Party has to offer is fear itself.

The DFL (and its chanting points repeater blogs MNPublius, mnpACT and Minnesota “Progressive” Project, among others, not to mention the regional mainstream media) are tossing about the figure “$6.2 Billion” as the defict the next Administration and Legislature will need to deal with.

This, of course, is the first step in the Left’s big-government-through-fear playbook:

1. Note a gap between planned spending and available revenue.
2. Warn of the “Service” cuts involved in cutting planned spending.
3. Ram that warning home with threats to gut police and fire departments, along with draconian cuts among teachers (while, mysteriously, leaving administators, pensions, convention and visitors bureaux, human rights offices and other such waste untouched) if politicians at all levels don’t raise the revenue needed by any means necessary – which means, inevitably, tax hikes.

As Tom Emmer pointed out over and over during his gubernatorial campaign, it was nonsense, of course.  The “budget” against which revenue left a “deficit” was not a “budget”, it was an “autopilot” adjustment of the existing budget based on increasing existing “services” by the amount the DFL-dominated bureaucracy says they’ll need to be increased.  It’s like setting a family budget according to your kids’ Christmas wish lists.

Gary Gross at LFR breaks it down (with emphasis added):

…what’s being called a $5,000,000,000 deficit is based on last biennium’s budget tails, which were wildly oversized vs. the projected revenue. According to the figure from the campaign trail, Minnesota is projected to take in almost $33,000,000,000 compared with $30,700,000,000 for the current biennium.

When omnibus spending bills are put together, the spreadsheet contains the amount that will be spent for that biennium and the amount that they’d like to spend in the next biennium. The second biennium request is called a budget tail. It’s what the MMB people are required to use for their budget projections. It isn’t something that must be spent.

The media don’t tell you this because – well, I’m not sure.  Maybe they figure that everyone is a government wonk and they already know all this. 

The DFL and its chanting-points-bots won’t you because, again, all they have to offer is fear.   And because an ignorant citizenry is a DFL citizenry.

It’s rare that they spend what the tails call for. In fact, the legislature can just as easily choose to spend significantly less. In fact, I suspect that’s what will happen, partially because Republicans have a number of reforms that will save significant amounts of money, starting with King Banaian’s reform to ZBB and Steve Gottwalt’s Healthy Minnesota Plan.

Those 2 reforms will save Minnesota taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars this biennium.

Your mission this next month, before the next session (which starts on January 3, a month from today): when you hear your neighbors and co-workers worrying about “the six billion dollar deficit”, set them straight.  And tell them to call their Reps and Senators; the GOP ones need the encouragement to do the right thing; the DFL ones need to know that the long electoral knives of last autumn aren’t nearly done yet.

It was 0430 on a Sunday.  I got paged down to Central Holding by Sergeant O’Hanrahan, from Street Crimes, about a 5150 – possible psych case – they were holding for me.  He didn’t have a lot to go by.  I got out of bed without disturbing the floozy I’d brought back from Alary’s last night, and drove down to Central.

I’d worked with O’Hanrahan years earlier, when we’d worked the crimes against literature beat together, so he recognized me.

“Hey, Sean”.

“Hey, Paddy. What’s up?”

“He’s in the isolation cell.  Follow me, and I’ll catch ya up”. 

We walked down the hall, our ears subconsciously blocking out the bedlam of an inner-city police station early on a Sunday morning.

“We got this guy – caucasian male, age 55.  Name on his DL was “Scotty Wombee”.  Arrested around 11PM for walking up to his neighbors and holding a video camera down by his groin and demanding that they…” he ruffled through the arresting officer’s notes “…touch, stroke and kiss his video camera”. 

I’d seen a lot of sick stuff in my hears as a police shrink.  Stuff that’d make a billy boat puke.  This was no great shakes.

“Wow.  About as subtle as a drag queen at a NASCAR race.  Anything else?”

“Yeah” O’Hanrahan said, “even though he was born and raised in Coon Rapids, he did his whole spiel in a German accent”. 

Hmm, I thought.  Don’t see many of those anymore.

O’Hanrahan and I walked to the control desk.  Sergeant Fitzpatrick was on the desk. 

“Hey, Seamus”, I said, nodding my head.  I’d known Fitz years ago, when we both worked the Political Vice detail.

“Hey, Lieutenant”, he nodded back.  “Here to see that Wombee character?”

“Yeah”.

“Whooie.  He’s a piece of work.  All the way back to the station, he kept asking Officers Kelly and O’McMurphy what they were compensating for with ‘za gunz and za handcuffz'”, he said, rolling his eyes.

“Open up Number Six for Lieutenant Cohen”, O’Halloran said, as I signed my roscoe over to Fitzpatrick.

———-

Wombee was about five foot nine, with thick brown hair and ferret-like eyes darting back and forth as he lounged on the chair in the isolation cell. 

“Hello”, I said.  “I’m Sean Cohen”.

Wombee looked me over as I sat.  “Inderezting dot you vould zay zat”, he said, sounding a little like a John Banner impersonator at a “Hogan’s Heroes” fan club convention.  “Vy do you hate your mozzah?”

“I don’t”, I said.  “So what do you do for a living?”

He leapt to his feat and clicked the heels of his worn Adidas together.  “I am a zhurnalizt!”

“A journalist?”

“Jawohl!”

“OK, what do you do for your other living?”

He sat back down and and affected a studied gaze.  “I am a lizenzed ah-kee-tekt”.

“Ah”‘  I riffled through the case notes.  “So the officers who picked you up said you were acting…inappropriately with your neighbors.  You even scared some of the kids”.

“I am a Zhurnalizt.  I zeek only za truze”, he said, pantomiming taking a pipe from between his teeth.

“Right, but why do what you did?”

“I AM A ZHURNALIZT!”, he bellowed, leaping to his feet.

“Right, I got that, you’re a journalist”.  Napoleon, Christ, journalists, Julius Caesar – I’d seen ’em all.  “But why?”

He sat back down, slowly, his eyes taking on that faint glow that I’d seen from so many 5150s; like they’re looking at you, but focusing on something 1000 yards the other side of you.

“I vuz making people avare of zat Legislator zat vaz in ze news”.

“Ah.  OK.  What about him?”

He looked around, and furtively whispered “he hed a gun“.

“Yeah?  And what about the gun made you walk around the neighborhood and, er, do what you did…”

He looked at me, focusing sharply, the way they do when they’re about to make a point they consider too self-evident for other people to miss.  He whispered furtivley:

“He iz kompenzating for somezing”.

“Yeah?”  What?”

He looked taken aback.

“You know – compenzating“. 

“Yep, I heard you.  Compensating for what?”

“Heh.  Everyboddy knows vot zey are compenzating for”.

“Not me.  What?”

“Hah!  For a lack of ze schlong!”

“Right.  And you know this precisely how?”

He leapt to his feet, face suddenly purple with rage.  “EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!  YOU MUST NOT QUESTION EVERYBODY!”.  He’d lost the German accent.

I sat back in my chair.  “OK.  Got it”. 

“EVERYBODY!  EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!  EVERYONE!”

“Right”. 

I turned and knocked on the two-way mirror.  O’Hanrahan walked in. 

“We’ve got a 10-569” – police code for “narcissistic personality disorder with delusions of grandeur and a tendency to reduce all personally-incongruent reality into facile stereotypes”.  Not uncommon, these days. 

I continued “I think he’ll need five milligrans of Nembutol to cool him down and get him through the night in lockup, and perhaps tomorrow we can work on something a little longer-lasting…”

O’Halloran pulled his taser and fired it at Wombee, who dropped to the ground, screaming..

“That’ll do, too”, I mumbled as I walked back to the desk, the faint odor of urine piercing the chilly, concrete-laced air. 

There are a million stories in the naked city.  Me?  I’m just walking my metaphorical beat, trying to get some underwear onto some of them.

Just you remember when any liberal calls any conservative “extremist” for any reason short of, y’know, showing actual extremist activity, that these are the people the DFL is running for office:

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is regarded as a “non-party friend” by the Communist Party USA.

So highly does the Communist Party regard Mr. Ritchie, that he has been allowed to attend an high level “not to be publicized” Party meeting in Minneapolis.

Remember the fit the left threw over Todd Palin’s flirtation with a group that advocated – academically – Alaskan secession?:

Ritchie and three of the Communists had just returned from the “Battle in Seattle” – the mass riots that broke out around the World Trade Organization meeting in that city.

Though he was an official U.S. delegate to the W.T.O. meeting, Ritchie gloats that the rioting and protests “stopped the WTO,” and that “It is a tremendous victory”.

I’m not the first to run this story.  But apparently the regional media was too busy digging through Tom Emmer’s resume to bother with Mark Ritchie’s past.

Especially his past with groups that enshrine the ideal that the ends justify the means.

(Via the Random Candice, who really needs to attend the next MOB party)