This…:

…is deft satire, but this…

…is a racist attack and call to murder?

When your opponents act like Jamie Gertz’ character on Square Pegs, if she’d been doing meth, rather than engage your point.

A year ago, Obama was being hailed as a “light worker”, the salvor of our nation’s soul; a man, but not just a man.

Today, of course, his poll numbers are gratifyingly human:

The nation is close to evenly split in its assessment of the president’s policies to date, and there is great intensity on both sides of the debate with dwindling numbers in the middle.Those are the chief findings of the latest NPR poll of 850 registered voters conducted nationwide Wednesday through Sunday by a bipartisan team. The pollsters found 53 percent approving of the president’s handling of his job, while 42 percent disapproved — the narrowest gap of the Obama presidency to date. Most of the approving group said they approved strongly, and an even greater majority of the disapproving group said they disapproved strongly.

Poll respondents liked a Democratic statement on solving health care problems better than a Republican statement (51 percent to 42 percent). However, when asked about the plan now moving through Congress, a plurality of 47 percent was opposed and 42 percent said they were in favor, based on what they had heard about the plan so far.

Presidential poll numbers are the most fungible transient asset in American politics, of course; Ronald Reagan’s numbers were abysmal in 1982, but jumped enough to give him re-election in 1984 and a Republican house of Congress in 1986.  So don’t start writing Obama’s political epitaph yet.

Because poll numbers aren’t forever.

I’m not so much saying this to the Republican and Conservative readers, though.  It’s not them I’m worried about.

No, it’s the readers on the left that concerned me.  Because while poll numbers change with the breeze, hatred just smolders on; Eric Kleefeld is finding racists under rocks.

He addresses the “racism” between the lines (it must be between the lines) from, in this case, Rush Limbaugh (with commentary inset):

So let’s take a look at some of those recent racially-charged attacks that have circulated against Obama, both right before and after the Gates incident.

• Above all others, the real celebrity here has been Rush Limbaugh. He’s done this kind of thing before — remember the “Barack, The Magic Negro” song? [which, while un-PC, was a takeoff on a line by a liberal commentator; certainly not a commentary on Limbaugh’s approach to race – Ed.] But in the wake of the Gates incident, he’s managed to become even more hard-edged about it. “Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman,” Limbaugh declared this past Friday. [which would have been pretty below-the-belt, had it not been for the fact that that’s exactly how Gates played it – as a racial issue- Ed.] Yesterday, he shared a dream he’s had about the dangers to capitalism: “I had a dream that I was a slave building a sphinx in a desert that looked like Obama.” [Remember when dissent was the highest virtue?  Now, it’s apparently “racist”- Ed.] And he joked that food-safety advocates will go after all the unhealthy foods people like to eat, one by one — but they’ll have to wait until Obama is out of office to ban Oreos. [I suppose it would have been safer to say “Starbucks” or “Volvo” or “Patagonia”…- Ed.]

How much intellectual seed corn is the left willing to burn to prop up The One?  Poll numbers come and go,  but assaults on the integrity of half of ones’ fellow countrymen – defamatory, specious, intellectually vacuous attacks, of course – are gifts that just keep on giving.

We’re about 18 months away from the next round of elections to the US House of Representatives. 

I remembered that when I got this email from an anonymous source:

Let’s talk about MN 4th District Representative Betty McCollum.

“B-Cup Betty”, as she’s known to her smarter colleagues on Capitol Hill – which is, let’s face it, all of them – is a product of Saint Catherine’s,  a fifth-rate Catholic women’s college that seems to succeed only in teaching its graduates how to use that hot Catholic school girl uniform to get what they want.  Which was, in fact, the only way she could get a job, much less a guy.

McCollum, being too homely and brunette to get a job in entertainment or the media, not smart enough to get into law school and not masculine enough to land a women’s studies professorship, went into education. 

She stank at it, of course – the Saint Paul School District has a sub-50% graduation rate, which sank while she was teaching, and has only fallen further since she’s been in Congress.

Unable to finish the job she was given, McCollum manipulated the DFL’s gender-equity bylaws to get herself what is broadly regarded (by anonymous but reliable DFL sources) as an “affirmative action” nomination in a cakewalk district, the Fourth.  “This was basically the political electoral equivalent of walking into a bar full of guys and saying “any of you big strong fellas wanna help me push my car?” and showing a little leg” said an anonymous source.  And even at that, for two straight elections McCollum has shown neither the guts nor the brains to face any challengers in a debate, saying (in effect) “They might talk mean about me!  They hate women!”. 

“Of course she wins in the Fourth” said an anonymous DFL source.  “The DFL could endorse a pile of monkey poo and get 55% of the vote in the Fourth!  Good lord, those people are all lobotomized union droogs!  The real question isn’t “why did an inexperienced, not-so-bright, poorly-educated party hack win in the Fourth” so much as “is there another district where such a lightweight could win any office?  I swear, if she didn’t have her gender going for her, she’d come in third for Water and Soil District Commissioner”.

Anonymous sources say McCollum – who is anonymously known for being a strutting man-hating martinet – runs an office renowned for dubious ethics.  Although specific charges have neither been filed nor prosecuted, anonymous sources say it’s just a matter of time.  “McCollum shows all the signs of being an ethics disaster” said a source who asked not to be named, but is a higher-up in the DFL; “She’s female, she’s unqualified, ill-educated and dumb, she’s a castrating bitch – or so I’ve heard – she’s Catholic, she’s of Irish descent, she’s been a union member, and she’s a woman in politics; you just know she took every bit of swag that people left on the floor”. 

“She’s dumb, poorly-educated, has no political background and was a failure as a teacher, she’s never run a race against serious competition, and she’t not even close to hot”, the source continued, “and yet she’s a high-maintenance diva!”.

Well, I went and filed that piece in the “Stupid Hack Piece” drawer. 

Along with this.  And this.  And this.

Because there’s just no room for corrosive, stupid sexism in politics!  Why, just because every single thing in the scabrous email above was identical to similar defamations of, say, Sarah Palin or Linda Chavez or Margaret Thatcher or Laura Ingraham or Michele Bachmann or…

…um, where were we?

(more…)

Most everyone thought Norm Coleman’s concession speech was gracious and classy.  There were some risible exceptions (see previous)…

…and Charlie Quimby, who notes:

I heard an MPR reporter say that cameras from The UpTake were excluded from livestreaming Coleman’s announcement. Instead, the news service shot shaky video from a neighbor’s yard and posted it here — a mute commentary on the snub.The UpTake has provided the most in-depth video documentation of the various proceedings associated with the recount, but has been systematically stiffed by Coleman’s staff. If Coleman does decide to run for office again, he’s certainly not paving the way with citizen media.

Now, let’s see if we can get this straight:  Uptake, an avowedly “progressive” “news organization”, gets access to “document” the election process from election authorities led by a “progressive” Secretary of State; they do a decent job of covering the proceedings (at least, the parts where their editorial stances aren’t included), but they are unmistakeably in the bag for Al Franken throughout the entire process.

So how is Coleman wrong for ejecting them?

I have no problem with partisan media; I am partisan media!  I have no problem in particular with the Uptake, who I believe generally tries to do a good job (with a few notable problems endemic to its’ “everyone plays!” participation model). 

But being partisan media has consequences.

I am a conservative blogger and host; I can fairly easily get access to Governor Pawlenty, John Kline, Michele Bachmann, and the one good Senator Minnesota has had since 2000, Norm Coleman, at least in part because my allegiances and the audience are pretty obvious.  They all know that while there might be a tough question or two, there will be no ambushes, no smearing, nothing rebroadcast out of context.

On the other hand, last year I sent invites to appear on the Northern Alliance to Senator Klobuchar, candidate Franken, Representatives Ellson and McCollum, and RT Rybak.   Only Rybak responded (we had a good interview!); the rest didn’t even give the courtesy of a rejection.

“Well, of course!”, the standard response went.  “You’re conservative media!  The Uptake is…”

Um…what is the Uptake?

“They’re journalists!”

Well, sure – and by the same standard, so am I.

“Nooooo, Berg – you’re a fire-breathing talk show host! It’s different!”

Keep your stereotypes to yourself.  I’ll put the interviews that Ed and I (and King, and John and Brian) do up against anything on MPR.  Of course that’s a matter of opinion, but it happens to be correct.

So – why the vapors over the “progressive” Uptake’s snub?  Partisan journalism has its downside!

SCENE:  At a sleazy bar in a newly-gentrified part of Northeast Minneapolis.  Music is playing on a jukebox, from which everything but the Indigo Girls and Sting have been removed.  A group of people – “Phoenix”, “Wege”, “Spotty”, “Aaron”, “Two Putt”, “MNob”, Jeff and “Blue Man” – sit, drinking organic beer.  One of them reads a tabloid newspaper.

BLUE MAN: “Hey, look at this!”

Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled yesterday.

TWO PUTT: “HOLY CRAP!”

PHOENIX: “OMGz!  What a bunch of fascists!”

JEFF:  “Er guys?”

WEGE: “Let’s think this over.  MNob – can you do some lawyer stuff?”

MNOB: “I’ll demand a summary judgment!”

BARTENDER:  “You can’t.  The judge has already ruled.

SPOTTY: “Demand it again!”

[Some of them rise from their seats]

BLUE MAN (continues):

In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of the NightJack blog. The officer, Richard Horton, 45, a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary, had sought an injunction to stop The Times from revealing his name

SPOTTY: “So in other words, bloggers who blog anonymously aren’t protocted any more?”

AARON: “Oh, my, god…”

JEFF: “Er, Aaron?  Technically, “Aaron Landy” actually IS your name”

AARON: “I hate you”

WEGE: “Let’s run for it!”

[TWO PUTT, MNOB, SPOTTY and AARON jump up and run from the room]

BLUE MAN: “Wait – isn’t this in England?”

PHOENIX: “It doesn’t matter; their court decisions should supercede ours!”

[All of them leave the room at a dead run]

And…scene.

Conrad DeFiebre is not one of the bad ones, as a general rule, as far as media types are concerned.  While he was a Strib writer for about 600 years, he was also one of the reporters that could tell a balanced, fair story.  He was the first reporter from either of the dailes (to say nothing the TV statiosn) to be bothered with reporting the actual facts on the Concealed Carry debate back in the nineties.  For that, I’ve personally given credit where it was due, not that anyone cares.

Long story short:  He’s always been a good reporter.

But these days he works for MN2020, the regional “non-partisan” “progressive” think tank.  Which is apropos not much, except that for someone whose gig has been telling entire, complete stories for his entire career, he kinda, well, doesn’t.

His latest piece is called “Conservatives “Re-Writing History”

; I’ll direct you to read the piece to find any examples of history at all, much less conservatives “re-writing” it.

Opposition to modern transit development may be on the wane in most parts of Minnesota,

“May” it be?  Well, I guess we have to take Mr. DeFiebre’s word for it.  Perhaps he knows of a Minnesota Poll on the subject?

but it’s alive and well in one surprising location: The Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.

“Light rail is an expensive investment without return except as an exercise in chest-thumping to make a city feel like it’s in the big leagues.”

That’s a quote from Lyle Wray, former Citizens League executive director, posted in big letters in the history center’s long-running transportation exhibit “Going Places: The Mystique of Mobility.” It enjoys equal billing with more mildly-worded praise of light rail in the display’s vintage Soo Line boxcar.

OK, so we have a qualitative judgment about the “mildness” or, I dunno, “spiciness” of wording?

I’ll let that pass.

What’s worse, an accompanying video clip features half a dozen anti-light rail comments, some from anonymous on-the-street interviewees, some from inveterate transit bashers at the Taxpayers League of Minnesota.

Er – so what?  Isn’t it refreshing that the Minnesota History Center,noted conservative tools that they are (note to non-Minnesotans: they are not; they are more given to hagiographic treatment of old labor and Farmor/Labor Party organizers) actually presents both sides of a story?

Does MN2020 have a problem with that?

Oh,wait.

I digress.  My question:  Where is history, and its conservative re-write?

Worse yet, the exhibit also includes plenty of promotion of personal rapid transit, a thoroughly failed technology that has been embraced by both the rabid right and the lunatic left, mainly as a foil to responsible transit proposals.

“Rabid”?  “Lunatic?”  Such invective from a…reporter?  Why, it’s almost as if DeFiebre is getting talking points from…someone with an ax to grind?
And let’s be clear: Personal Rapid Transit seems to be a rather pie-in-the-sky proposal that’d crisscross cities with small rails for tiny, taxi-like rail cars whose destinations could be programmed for anywhere on the system, rather than shuttling back and forth on a single line.  It’s utterly un-tested, and it’s the kind of thing that draws all sorts of fawning resolutions at caucus-time demanding government support, and its cost estimates (which are usually about 10% those of light rail lines per rail mile) strike this tech/engineering industry hanger-on as hopelessly pollyannaish.

But “Thoroughly failed?”  It can not “thorougly fail” unless it’s been “thorougly tested”.

But that kind of invective on an utterly speculative subject like PRT?  Why that can only mean one thing:

Minneapolis artist, activist and blogger Ken Avidor tipped me off…

[scraaaaatch]

Ken “Avidor” Weiner is indeed a blogger.  He’s an “artist” of sorts as well – the only “cartoonist” in the Twin Cities less talented that Swiftee.  But he’s indeed an “activist” for light rail; so active, indeed, that he felt he needed at least two of him.

Note to Conrad DeFiebre: you might wanna pick better sources for this stuff.  Not that “Sources” matter so much in your new career – clearly John Fitzgerald is mushy on the subject – but still.

But yet again, I digress.

The post is a puff piece about the wonders of light rail, and how short-sheeted they allegedly are in the MHS presenation on the subject.

So where is the the ballyhooed “conservative rewrite of history?”  It’s the present.  And the issue of “is light rail a boon or a doggle” is very, very Very, VERY, VERY much in the balance.

Because even if oil runs out tomorrow, the free market will have developed a hydrogen-powered car (the ultimate Personal Rapid Transit) and a network of nuclear powered hydro stations long before government will have built rails to haul the gray, lumpen hordes of proles about.

Read over the weekend at a local anonymous leftyblog, essentially labelling any criticism of Sonia Sotomayor as one form of “racism” or another:

But you know what? Count me among those who think that she is a bit better than the white men out there calling her unintelligent, lazy, fat, unqualified, racist, an irresponsible spender, ugly, and arrogant.

I’d be the first of those links.  You’ll note that in no way do I call Judge Sotomayor unintelligent – anywhere, at all, much less in the piece linked above – but merely point out some commentary wondering she’s a bit of a professional lightweight for the highest court in the land.

Of course, as we’ve discovered in the past four months, dissent and skepticism about government is not the highest form of patriotism after all, but in fact one form depravity or another, whichever is convenient.

But as we’ve seen, in this anonyblogger’s post as well as some of the comments in my post, Sotomayor is serving the only purposes Obama really has for her nomination; to serve as a sop to female and Hispanic voters, and give the left a shrieking point, an ugly strawman to use to demonize dissent.  Just like with Obama himself.

Oh, yeah:

*Title stolen (and modified) from Anonymous Liberal

Well, that doesn’t narrow things down much, does it?

You are a blogger, writing for a blog that is, let’s just say, “hyperspecialized” on one local politician.

In some of your more many flights of fancy, you call yourself a “citizen journalist”.  I will, in fact, call you “journalist”; first, you have to call me “Admiral”.

But I digress.

You asked me a question last week on your “blog”; if the Tea Parties are as independent as I said they were in a stand-up interview with am anonymous blogger who was roaming the Capitol grounds with a camera during the Tea Party, “who pays for the porta-potties?”

I’m sure you chuckled a high-pitched, strangled, adenoidal cackle as you hit “Post” on that one.

But since you fancy yourself a “journalist”, I thought I’d ask you, why not do what “journalists” do?  Do what I used to do back when I was a “reporter”; do the actual work, and call around and find out who paid for the porta-potties, so as to tell once and for all if there’s a vast, right-wing conspiracy behind the Tea Parties, or if it is (like pretty much everything that’s ever been in your “blog”) a rumor and an assumption and a nudge and wink and strangled cackle?

Oh, yeah – I talked with Toni Backdahl, one of the people from “Moving MN Forward”, the grass roots group that organized the MN Tea Party.  She writes:

– Walgreens stuff for event:  10.64

– Adobe font for T-shirts:  58.72

– domain names .org, .inf, .net:  50

– building tops for barrels:  34.08

– office max:  33.62

– archivers paper:  17.06

– banners:  220.97

– Blick art:  24.58

–  metal for stand:  123.56

–  insurance:  463.81

– t-shirts Monitors:  567

– Office supply:  122.59

– 2-way radios:   330

Total costs:   2056.63

donations:   1630

left to cover:   -426

The above is [one of the local organizer]’s account for her portion of the event. Online T-Shirt sales figure is not included here, but our portion is minimal and most likely will not cover the deficit. Also they sold some t-shirts at the event but haven’t received any info on that either.

[Another local organizer] received a few donations from friends of his to cover the cost of printing (15,000 flyers and 10,000 post cards)

Port-a-potties were $497.00 (one friend gave him $500 for it)

I had about $200.00 worth of expenses (cell phone, hosting, printing and misc) that I donated without reimbursement

[Another local organizer] had about $100.00 worth of expenses in cell phone charges she donated without reimbursement. Angela had expenses for the credential materials she donated without reimbursement.

We all brought garbage bags and water (which got mixed into the water from [Minnesotans for Limited Government])

Sounds like Rush Limbaugh and “Faux” News (hahaha, that never gets old -no, really) teamed up!

But at any rate – see?  It’s fairly simple.  Question answered.

Now you can respond to this one of two ways:  do some digging and find actual evidence that there’s some larger, more sinister group funding these Tea Parties, or giggle your strangled little giggle and snark “Suuuuuure, that’s all“, and scamper back to your little cave.

I’m guessing you’ll go with “B”.

Now, since we’re all playing “journalist”, I have a question for all of you: Is the entire staff your Bachman-Derangement-Syndrome motivated blog a result of attempted lobotomies gone terribly wrong, or did your parents feed you peeled lead paint chips as babies?

See?  That’s journalism!

Playing little doop-di-doop games with Photoshop?  Not so much.

After years of insisting he’s “Not the DFL’s Monkey”, rumor has it that former Strib columnist Nick Coleman attended “Drinking Liberally”, the weekly local liberal party that, like most local liberal events, isn’t local at all.

Connect the dots, people.  Connect the dots.

 I’m codifying this as Berg’s Eighth Law:

Democrats will only profess respect for a Republican when it serves their direct interest.

The examples are legion; John McCain was every Dem’s favorite Republican – until he became a threat.  And mark my words – if Chuck Hagel had a consertive epiphany tomorrow, he’s be demonized as well.  In Minnesota, it’s the same thing; to the likes of Lori Sturdevant (who is as perfect a totem as exists for the Twin Cities’ media’s attitude on politics) the only Republicans that count are the ones like Ron Erhard, the ones that are indistinguishable from DFLers.

I found this bit from John Nichols’ exceedingly dim hit piece in The Nation just after I published my last one; I add emphasis:

Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: “Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not.”

Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate’s version of the stimulus measure.

I suspect Sue Collins, having offended her Democrat masters, won’t be doing lunch in DC for a while.

And in conclusion, a line almost too stupid even for Grace Kelly: 

Did Rove, Collins and their compatriots want a pandemic?

I said “almost”.

I’m envisioning the publishers at the Washington Post in a meeting:

GILES THROCKMORTON: “Muffy, put a bump on this cognac?  Thank you, dear.  OK, everyone.  We’re getting are ah-sses handed to us.  Ideas?

BENTLY FITZWILLIS: “NPR and Romanesko all say we’ve been swinging to the center…”

SADAH COHEN: “THAT’S the problem!”

THROCKMORTON: “I concur.  What do we do?”

DEREK MICAH DU FRESNE: “I don’t know; we’re laying people off as it is…”

THROCKMORTON: “Damn finances; we need a stronger liberal presence!”

(The previous conversation was fictional.  All celebrity voices were impersonated – badly)

Far fetched? Maybe.  But I’m trying to figure out a better reason that the WaPo would hire Ezra Klein, currently with the Prospect and formerly one of the interchangeable giggly fratboybloggers from Pandagon.

Is there method to the madness? Perhaps:

The benefits to Klein are clear. He gets a potenitally larger audience and one would assume paycheck for the move.

Is there madness to the method?

As for the Post the benefits are less clear as they add to their overhead which they have been chopping at the print edition and their is no guarantee that Klein will attract enough readers to increase the web site’s revenues which is what I assume they are striving for.

And the real question:

After all the paper and web site already lean left so do they really need to add to that side of the ledger?

Having observed the behavior of the Twin Cities media in the past few weeks, I wonder if anyone in the media even recognizes the concept of “leaning left?”

Example: A journalist generally regarded as  credible writing at a local “progressive” publication, covering the Tea Parties, used the term “Teabaggers” in his headline.  Didn’t seem to have a clue anyone would see a sign of bias or slant in it.

If you question a typical journalist, he or she will deny any personal bias (possible), and usually any on the part of the media as a whole – which either means a massive conspiracy to brainwash reporters (implausible) or a persepctive utterly foreign ot most of us.

Over the years, I’ve given the Minnesoros…er, Minnesota Independent a lot of crap.

Of course, they’ve deserved much of it; from their early, fingers-crossed insistence that nosirreebob there was no link between their parent groups (The Center for “Independent” Media) and the various tentacles of George Soros’ propaganda machine (it turned out, by golly, there were) to plagiarism, comical reporting and, finally, the shocking revelation that the whole enterprise was a propaganda tool (“Shut up!“), the publication has been at times a carnival of errors.

Which doesn’t mean they haven’t had good writers on board; Andy Birkey, Paul Demko and Paul Schmelzer are all perfectly capable journalists on their respective beats.

Chris Steller,on the other hand, needs some work:

Here’s evidence that Minnesota’s post-election battle for U.S. Senate has permeated pop culture. Al Franken and Norm Coleman were cited this week by contestants in another competition that attracted millions of partisans: the race between movie actor Ashton Kutcher and news juggernaut CNN to be first to gain one million followers on Twitter, the social-media phenomenon.

Ah.  Well, now we know we’re into vital news territory.  It’s good to kinow we have seasoned (citizen) journalists covering that crucial King/Kutcher beat.

Two leading players in the new-media stunt known as the ”Twitter War“ compared themselves to Minnesota’s Senate rivals. Kutcher tweeted “now I know how Al Franken must have felt” when the race looked tight on Thursday. After the actor bested the network today, CNN host Larry King said, “I’m not a sore loser. I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman and take this to the courts.”

Well, by all means, Minnesota, let’s let Larry King serve as our rudder in difficult times. Let the bland, mushy-left, softball-tossing star-hugging King, the emptiest of all the talking heads, steer the ship of state!

It’ll make things so much easier.

Greg Gutfeld catalogues the racism, hatred and rage [links to video] at the Tea Parties.

Garafolo, Napolitano and Coopero are onto something here.

Yesterday and Tuesday, we noted that the left, locally and nationally, is engaging in class-action slander, based around getting people to believe that:

Conservative dissent equals murder.

It’s not an isolated trend.

It’s not new.

And it’s not an accident.

———-

“The dangerous right” is a well-worn trope in American political/media history.  It is also – to invoke Orwell’s aphorism about dictators needing enemies – entirely predictable.

Three weeks ago Philip Jenkins wrote an excellent history about the “Dangerous Right” media meme in American Conservative.  It’s an oldie, all right (emphasis added):

From 1938 through 1941, the media regularly presented stories suggesting that the U.S. was about to be overwhelmed by ultra-Right fifth columnists, millions strong, intimately allied with the Axis powers. (Actual numbers of serious militants were in the low thousands at most.) Reportedly, the militant Right was armed to the teeth and plotting countless domestic terror attacks—bombings in New York and Washington, assassinations and pogroms, the wrecking of trains and munitions plants. Plotters were rumored to have high-placed allies in the military, raising the specter of a putsch. The ensuing panic was orchestrated by newspapers and radio and reinforced by films, newsreels, and comic books. Historians characterize these years as the Brown Scare.

In other words, standing in the way of FDR, the New Deal and the dawn of enlightened “liberalism” and Hope and Change itself was a shadowy, secret army – why, one might almost call it a “vast, right-wing conspiracy”!

And when liberals come to office with big, sweeping, “transformative” plans?  Well, the “enemy among us” needs to be trotted out as well:

After JFK’s election in 1960, the devoutly anti-Communist Minutemen took first place in liberals’ demonology. As in the 1930s, the far Right was supposed to be closely tied to out-of-control military officers. Remember fictional treatments of the time like “Dr. Strangelove” and “Seven Days in May”? Once more, too, the supposed threat from far-Right extremism surfaced in mainstream politics, especially during the 1964 elections…As in the 1930s, the extremists existed, and some hotheads contemplated violence. But once again, a yawning gulf separated the reality of the threat from the public perception.

In our lifetimes – so far – the worst fell during the Clinton years:

Between 1995 and 2001, America suffered the Great Militia Panic, when exposés of ultra-Right violence became a media staple. For liberal press outlets, America was facing a clear and present danger from the militias, from Nazis and skinheads, and even from dissident elements within U.S. Special Forces. Liberals accused the anti-Clinton Right of providing extremists with ideological aid and comfort. An impressive outpouring of books—peaking in 1996—warned of an imminent terrorist disaster. Typical titles raised the shadow of America’s Militia Threat, Terrorists Among Us, or The Birth of Paramilitary Terrorism in the Heartland. One book warned of the Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is Only the Beginning.

I always found it ironic how lefties accused conservatives of “wetting their pants in terror” about islamic terrorism after 9/11, after living through the waves of “mommy, there’s a militiaman under my bed!” that swept the nation during the Clinton years

The news media was open to the most improbable charges of right-wing atrocities. In 1996, television news shows discovered a (wholly spurious) wave of arson attacks in which white extremists were allegedly wiping out the nation’s black churches.

As recently as a decade ago, “terrorism” in the American public consciousness meant, almost entirely, domestic right-wing activism…by far the worst consequence of the Militia Panic was the massive underplaying of Islamic terrorism in U.S. public discourse and the disproportionate focus on the domestic far Right. Liberal columnists scoffed knowingly at terrorism experts who warned about foreign militants like al-Qaeda, when every informed observer knew that the real menace was internal.

I remember lefty pundits on about 9/13 furrowing their brows and warning us that right-wing domestic terror was still the “real danger”, as the Twin Towers still burned.  They were – it is hard to remember – that deluded.

By the way – does any of this sound familiar (emphasis again added)?  Elements of this phenomenon anticpate blogging itself by about sixty years:

If the more bizarre accusations sound like the common currency of the show trials in Stalin’s Russia in these very years, that is no coincidence. The main exposés of fascist conspiracy emanated from Communist Party journalists like Albert Kahn and John Spivak. (Spivak himself was an operative for the Soviet NKVD.) Charges circulated through Kahn’s newssheet The Hour before being picked up in the liberal press. The Red agenda was straightforward in that the Brown Scare allowed the Left to discredit any opponent of radical New Deal policies. Scratch the surface of any enemy of the Left, they claimed, and you would find a fascist spy, a lyncher, a storm trooper.

Or a member of a “vast, right-wing” and now “eliminationist” “conspiracy”.
The conclusion is near the beginning, and it is damning (emphasis added):

Based on the record of past Democratic administrations, in the near future terrorism will almost certainly be coming home. This does not necessarily mean more attacks on American soil. Rather, public perceptions of terrorism will shift away from external enemies like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and focus on domestic movements on the Right. We will hear a great deal about threats from racist groups and right-wing paramilitaries, and such a perceived wave of terrorism will have real and pernicious effects on mainstream politics. If history is any guide, the more loudly an administration denounces enemies on the far Right, the easier it is to stigmatize its respectable and nonviolent critics.

Like me.

Like Representative Bachmann.

Like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Bernie Goldberg.

Like you, you bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freak, you.

———-

When I’d heard that the DNC had hired linguist George Lakoff, I openly worried that the left was embarking on a campaign of violence – violence against the language. It would be a campaign to control how the language itself imparts perceptions about politics.  It’s a battle the Democrats have been winning for decades, if only because they’re the only ones that show up.

The parallels with Orwell’s 1984, where language was being systematically engineered to reflect first political orthodoxy and, eventually, nothing at all, are impossible to miss.

In Mike Judge’s overlooked classic movie Idiocracy, society falls because idiots outbreed smart people.  Despots and demigogues have long known that the best way to take over a society is to win over the thugs and the dolts; the pen is, at least in the short term, not mightier than the sword or, in this case, the truncheon. Noriega had his Dignity Battalions; Mugabe, the Gukurahundi; Hitler and Mao and Stalin, the Sturmabteilung and Hitlerjugend, the Red Guards, the Komsomol, the legions of dedicated true believers who didn’t have to think, just do; to smear the Jew, the Bourgeois, the Wreckers today, and to beat, imprison and kill them tomorrow.  For society’s own good.

And the Big Left today has, on a rhetorical plane, the same basic thing; the legions of the ingenuous, the dedicated but not-excessively-bright, the people who are willing to suspend the rules of civility and decency in service of…

…what?  The meme that “Some of your fellow citizens’ beliefs will lead to mass murder!”?

I’d like to think that continuing to take the high road is the right response to this class-action slander.  I’m less confident in this all the time. Indeed, as I noted yesterday, DHS Secretary Napolitano has tipped the left’s hand.

Let’s try to roll it all together tomorrow.

Reading Minnesota Progressive Project is like going to a Joaquin Phoenix concert; you don’t really care for the stuff, and you don’t want to go for the event’s own sake, but you just know  you’re going to see a train wreck.  (Sort of like Al Franken’s first press conference, if heaven forfend he gets seated in the Senate).

And so I occasionally gulp down a glass of water (on an empty stomach only) and pop open their container in GoogleReader, and see what wonders the new day brings.

Ah.  Yesterday it was Grace “9/11 was an inside job!” Kelly, in a piece that started – mirabile dictu – fairly innocuously, discussing (very briefly) the large number of refugees who’ve come to the Twin Cities over the decades (discussing Somalis and Tibetans but missing the Vietnamese and H’mong, who fled the oppression of the far left to get here – but no matter. I wouldn’t expect Kelly to get  sense of history anytime soon; let it go).

But then:

I think we have to rethink our “terrorism” label. Certainly the American Revolution would have been considered a criminal violent insurgency against the established order of English rule of the colonies. Gasp – the American Revolution advocated violence! Gasp – a criminal violent insurgency today would be called “terrorism”.

I could feel my jaw dropping in dazed wonder. It’s the old “The founding fathers were terrorists” bit.  There are still lefties who use that old bit of self-pleasuring historical illiteracy.

Onward:

So when can people advocate violence and not be labeled terrorists?

For some of us, that’s fairly simple: when terror isn’t the primary, or only, means of achieving a social or political goal.  Saying “this land is ours, go away”, and taking up arms and fighting those who try to take the land back, is not terrorism.  Kidnapping your occupiers and sending body parts back to their families with notes demanding independence is terrorism.

Publishing a declaration of independence,and defending that independence, is not terrorism.  Setting off nail bombs in Boston or New York [*] to indiscriminately kill soldiers, Tories and innocent bystandards and cow the British into leaving – that would have been terrorism.

Is it just a case of my violence is good, your violence is bad? Is the US making the moral violence judgments for whole rest of the world? I would say “yes”. My, how imperialistic of us, particularly in light of principles of American revolution.

One wonders if Grace “9/11 was an inside job” Kelly knows what the “principles of the American Revolution” were.

Defining what liberty was, and how the individual related to government in a free society?  Recognizing inalienable rights?  Establishing a democratic republic? Enshrining free press, worship, assembly, speech, jury trials, due process and enumerated powers?
I’m guessing that’s not what she has ever thought was thinking of.

PRE-POST NOTE: I actually wrote this series last week, when the “annoying trickle” of pointless,mindless, baseless slander of conservatives was pretty much background noise.

Of course, since I wrote the first three parts of the series, Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security – which would seem to have become completely politicized in the past three months – has essentially declared all conservative thought and dissent (not to mention military service) as probable cause for government suspicion.

My friend and radio colleague John Hinderaker at Power Line, shreds this report in one of the essential fiskings in recent blog history; I’m sure it’s just the beginning.

But the extent of the defamation of all conservative thought in this country goes way beyond a witless bureaucrat and her minions, and won’t end in the unlikely event Napolitano is fired in the disgrace she deserves.

My timing, sadly, could not be better.  Or worse, depending on your point of view.

———-
As I noted yesterday – the usual annoying trickle of leftybloggers and “alternative” media types grasping onto examples of bad behavior by conservatives or (more usually) inflating off-handed remarks into “evidence” and outright mangling of context has turned into a babbling runoff-swollen brook of cultural defamation.

Few brooks babble more than local leftyblog icon Mark Gisleson, who wrote last week:

On Sunday’s The UpTake live news show [no archive available], host Tom Elko’s conservative blogger guest Mitch Berg turned to the camera and implored his 2nd Amendment buddies to not get crazy. No clue if JammieWearingFool listens to Mitch’s radio show or reads his blog.

Now, haven’t seen the video of the Uptake appearance – if there’s anything I hate more than listening to my voice, it’s seeing myself on TV – but I’m pretty sure the subject was the nutcase in Pittsburgh who shot the three cops, due to (he and the media claimed) his fear of Obama’s anti-gun proposals.  Now, despite that fact that most of us Second Amendment/Human Rights activists deal with this by joining the NRA (and  you’ll note that there have not been four million of these incidents), I was urging fellow human rights activists to not panic; we’ve beaten back worse than this, and done it not only by civil means, but means we can be proud of a civil Americans.

It’s hilarious, of course – this is the same Mark Gisleson who five years ago earned undying infamy for pining for armed revolution, in the Twin Cities’ Reader’s late, unlamented “Babelogue” (whose archives have perhaps mercifully gurgled down the memory hole):

In my heart, I still believe in revolution. In my heart, I still think I have the ‘nads to put my life on the line for a cause. In my gut I think this is the only way we’ll ever achieve our goals of economic and social justice. But in my head, I want to win the next election so we don’t have to have a revolution.

…and who’s boasted about a purported past as a “labor goon”, has suddenly gotten the vapors over the odd bit of (let’s take him at his word, by which I mean “humor the delusion”) borderline-militant rhetoric.

Vapor-y enough to refer us to…:

And TBogg has more on the eliminationist Right.

Ah. TBogg.  Well, if TBogg says it, it’s…

…well, it’s someone else’s talking point, only lobotomized.  TBogg is the ultimate metastasization of the anonymous leftyblogger; intellectually vacuous, given to broad sweeps of cultural group slander (while shielded from accountability by his precious anonymity) and waves of nasty, petulant, juvenile snarkiness, and…

…well, pretty much everything that the local anonymous leftyblog community aspires to.

But is the right “eliminationist?” Wow.  That’s a word you don’t see every day; Daniel Goldhagen used the term “eliminationist anti-semitism” to describe the German people before and during WWII – but he took a whole book to do it, in which me laid out a case that German society had in it a long tradition of a desire to, y’know, kill Jews.

So since it’s such a big word, curiousity triumphed over experience. I read “TBogg”, wondering as to the “evidence” of the “eliminationist right” that apparently lurks outside the gates of our civilization.

Read it if you feel compelled to do so; it tries to link the story of James Adkisson, the deranged Knoxville man who, let it be known, really really did hate liberals (WARNING! PDF FILE! GIVE UP ALL HOPE OF USABILITY OR PERFORMANCE!), and followed up on that hatred by killing two people at a Unitarian Universalist church.

Mr. Bogg (and the various leftybloggers who are his only real sources) ties Adkisson to Timothy McVeigh, which is trite and facile but not uttelry inaccurate, and thence to “Right-wing hate radio”, the diabolical cabal of Limbaugh/Hannity/Bernard Goldberg (?), who we are assured are really behind it all.

And there, in the bleatings of a gutless anonymous blogger and his dotzy fanboy in Saint Paul and of a thousand similar intellectual copulations, is the nucleus of the real story; the left wants you, and the population at large, to make the following leap:

Conservative dissent leads to murder.

More tomorrow.

EPILOGUE:  Again – I wrote the above late last Friday.  I’ll write more about Secretary Napolitano’s slander on Friday.

Last week, Iowahawk did a hilarious send-up of JournoList, the hush-hush list-serve for liberal “deep thinkers”:

JOSH MARSHALL: How about we do something about how wingnut bloggers live in an echo chamber

JESSE SINGAL: sweeet!!!! gmta

MICHAEL COHEN: ya its like those f*****z are in a echo chamber or something

CHRIS HAYES: gmta

JONATHAN CHAIT: ya total echo chamber

BRAD DELONG: echo-o-o-o-o-o-o cha-a-a-a-mber-er-er-er

ISAAC CHOTINER: lols

EZRA KLEIN: ok,,, we agree. Yglesias its your turn to write it

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: cant, I have h/w assignment due for rahm emanuel

OK, that’s a spoof – but I have a hunch I know what one of the recent topics must have been. There’s been such a wide-spread synchronicity of – for lack of a better word – “thought” among so many regional and national leftybloggers, I can’t help but think it’s not only no coincidence, but in fact a symptom of the most caustic initiative on the part of the American left.
———-

Before we get to the story, let’s talk aphorisms.  Aphorisms can be taken way too far – but they can be useful memes for categorizing things like human behavior.
One of my favorites I get from watching the odd episode of House.  In and among all the glib causticness, House trips upon the odd ingenious bit of human nature.

Many of those bits tie back to his main rule – his Prime Directive, if you will – for human nature; everybody lies.  It’s true, really; at some point or another, everyone finds it in their self-interest or sense of emotional self-preservation to bend the truth.

I’m positing that this rule as a corollary when it comes to the left-leaning “alternative” media.  Indeed, let’s call this “Berg’s Second Law of Leftyblogging”:  whenever liberals toss out defamatory generalizations about conservatives, they are projecting. (Classic example comes about 1:04 into this video).

You can pretty much name your slur; the party that yaps about “fatcats” is the party that owes its soul to plutocrats.  The party that whinged about Bush’s record on civil liberties has always been the party that actually did crush civil liberties (see the ’94 Crime Bill, the ’96 Counterterrorism Act, and the various Dem plans on the “Fairness” Doctrine, bank takeovers and the ). The party that complains about violence, corruption, wastrelcy and incompetence is violent, corrupt, spendthrift and incompetent.

It’s a theory, but I’ll stand by it. Indeed, you’ll see why as this piece continues.

There’s one more aphorism.  It’s George Orwell’s note that dictators always need enemies to keep the people occupied.

They don’t even need to be dictators!

———-

It’s a running joke among conservatives; if you order a pizza, and a lefty hears about it, it’s an example of extremism.  Pushing to liberalize charter-school laws and vacant-housing ordinances? Activism for the Second or Tenth Amendments?  Extremism.  To paraphrase the old drill sergeant aphorism, “everything you do can get you labelled an extremist, and everything you don’t do can get you labelled an extremist”.

I started seeing little trickles and dribbles around the regional Sorosphere a couple of weeks ago: references to “right-wing extremism” (this in reference to a quip by Michele Bachmann that uses some kind of guerrilla warfare reference to refer to conservatives in Minnesota), usually with more-than-muted warnings about “militancy” and “violence”.

It’s tempting (and in the case of the link above, accurate) to write it all off as examples of intellectual laziness, of the febrile thrashings of inferior minds.  Indeed, both of these play into the larger point.

But there is a larger point. The leftybloggers involved in these casual, petty, paranoid defamations are unwitting tools in a long-running campaign to control the English language, if necessary by devaluing it to uselessness.

More tomorrow.

Let’s interrupt the local leftyblogosphere’s giddy tittering over Rachel “Kirk Cameron” Maddow’s referring to the Tea Party protests as “teabagging”. If they weren’t a bunch of giggly arrested adolescents in the first place, they’d be conservatives, and the Sorosphere is largely so devoid of wit that this is what passes for clever in those quarters.

No, let’s look past the juvenilia and into the beef of the tax-mania that Maddow so dumbly short-changes for her gullible (and tiny) audience.  Jamie Delton breaks it down well:

Does she realize during the campaign the $250K figure originally claimed was gradually modified by Obama and Biden to $133K?

Is she confusing this “tax cut” with Obama’s deception of quadrupling the deficit and then saying he is cutting the (quadrupled) deficit in half? Does she not realize tax payers will be forced to pay the needless debt being incurred now by the democrats in the budget and stimulus bills through the ultimate tax authority of the federal government and the Federal Reserve’s inflated printed money, which is the same as a tax? When does a Democrat stop cheerleading taxes and begin to turn their attention to responsible government?

What?  Ask Rachel Maddow questions?

Well, goodness knows the Sorosphere won’t.  On Marty Owings’ internet talk show a few weeks back, I took a dig at some of Maddow’s assertions.  One of the liberal panelists’ responses – well, it boiled down to “how dare you question her.  She was a Rhodes scholar!”

Cecil Rhodes should demand his money back.

The Daily Kos – with a seven-digit budget and a staff of nine – is among the leftybloggers whining about not being on the liberal gravy train:

Some of the leading liberal bloggers are privately furious with the major progressive groups — and in some cases, the Democratic Party committees — for failing to spend money advertising on their sites, even as these groups constantly ask the bloggers for free assistance in driving their message.It’s a development that’s creating tensions on the left and raises questions about the future role of the blogosphere at a time when a Dem is in the White House and liberalism could be headed for a period of sustained ascendancy.

Those crazies don’t come cheap!  Just ask Minnesota Progressive Project.

Wanna bet they’re in line for some “stimulus” money?

I try to be civil.  Really, I do.  Even across party lines.  Some of my best friends are liberals.  I talk with liberals; I’m the guy who works overtime to invite liberals to MOB parties; heck, even Uptake invited me on their show to talk last weekend.  I got interviewed in the friggin’ Utne Reader, for crying out loud!

Not saying I try to cozy up to the other side.  But I am not one to suspend the Golden Rule just because I differ with someone’ politics. I prize civility.

But I have my limits.

As my friend and Salem Radio colleague Dennis Prager says, I strive for clarity more than agreement.  Being clear is a genuine virtue, especially in political blogging – a trade built to a great extent on obfuscation and spin.

So when “Tom Angelo” at Minnesota Progressive Project writes:

Mitch “Thank God for Tom Delay” Berg likes to pick on us here at MN Progressive Project…

Let’s do try to be clear: I don’t like to “pick on” the MPP.

I like to reply to little bon mots like this, in about the same way I like to shoot rubber bands when I’m bored:

Here is an excerpt from a post on Mitch’s site yesterday:

The stock market does well for a president – Clinton – who, to be fair, was forced to do a decent, hands-off job on economic policy by a conservative congress, and to be even more fair was benefitting from the “Peace Dividend” Ronald Reagan gave him: “The President is responsible for the strong market!”

The stock market starts correcting into a mild recession as overvalued tech stocks correct at the very end of his term in office: “The President is not responsible for the market!”

The already-ailing market tumbles after 9/11: “The President is responsible for the weak market!”

Leaving aside the historical errors in the post, you can see what he’s doing, making the case that the performance of the markets is assigned to the president on a partisan basis. When there is a Democrat in office and the market is doing well than it’s because of the President. When a Republican is in office and the market is doing well it’s not because of the president.

But do you notice what is missing from Mitch’s post?

Proof.

That’s right, “Mr. Angelo”.  Because it’s a qualitative observation.  There is no quantitative measurement for impressions of bias (which is why people like, say, everyone on the MPP can get away with saying the mainstream media is conservative).  There is no “proof”, per se, short of piling up dozens of quotes from drooling leftybloggers and cable-TV shills saying…exactly what I said.

But let’s continue. I like to mock the Minnesota Progressive Project for their mindless hyperdramatics.

I like to make sure the world knows that some of your “writers” are shrieking ninnies who are groaningly incurious and are, let’s be honest, almost too obvious to parody.

 I want to make sure that we’re clear on the fact that the Minnesota Progressive Project posted a “diary” by an anonymous hitblogger who turns out to be a sad, risible little fellow from New York who is motivated by a curious vendetta; the piece had not a single word of of truth in it (except for the bits that are either standard industry practices or things the NARN has been joking about for years).  It used a manufactured source that has gone public and disavowed the use of his information in the context that Fred Gates (“Jimmy Olson” to the MPP) presented it.  It was, in short, a lie.  Pure and simple. And the MPP ran it without question.

Hit the link.  It’s got the proof.

Oh, yeah – and that if you want to find out things about Mitch Berg, you should do what a “journalist” would do and ask, rather than send giggling, dippy chuzzlewits like Grace Kelly calling around town looking for dirt on me. (Yes, Grace, you gutless hack, you are busted!)

And when you pile all that together, I guess I don’t so much like to say “if brains, talent and integrity were gasoline, the entire staff of the Minnesota Progressive Project couldn’t drive a moped around the inside of a Cheerio” so much as I merely find the statement accurate enough to run with.

Glad we’re clear on that.

I’m on my way to The Uptake’s undisclosed location in Saint Paul for a taping.

On the one hand, I’ve been told to be careful; “Uptake’s a bunch of hard-lefties; watch for the ambush”.  I’ve certainly encountered the group’s seamy side before.
On the other hand, I’m always up for an adventure. Things seem – before the fact – to be on the up-and-up.

We’ll see!

“Ollie Ox” at “A Bluestem Prairie” – what is it with leftybloggers and anonymity? – has apparently realized that liberalism is a vapid mind-suck, and that her fellow liberal bloggers range from talentless ninniesm comically depraved hacks, and wannabee Frank Riches, and has decided to shutter her blog:

After posting at this blog for 2 years, 8 months, we’re feeling the need to spruce up the joint. Bluestem will be shuttered after today until June 1, when the blog will return as a venue for nonfiction essays about rural topics.Thanks for reading

OK, I made up the rationale. It seems to be in vogue.

Oh, all kidding aside, I’ve mixed it up with Bluestem Prairie in the past, but “Ollie” was one of very few anonymous leftybloggers who seemed not to abuse her anonymity as a cover for gutless, abusive hackery.  Why, it’s almost like she wrote stuff a normal person could attach a name to.

Hm. Radical concept.

Anyway, all the best.

(Two years and eight months?  Sheesh.  I can do that standing on my head).

I can’t remember the last time I picked up the City Pages.

The alma mater of the likes of James Lileks and Steve “Mister Furious” Perry, the Pages  – which was sort of a wannabe Village Voice even before the VV’s parent company bought the freebie ‘zine out some decade and a half ago – were once a formidable journalistic operation.  Under Perry, the paper did a lot good, solid reporting; they especially shone at doing the long-form, in depth reporting that the dailies had been de-emphasizing even before the industry’s current woes.

But lately?  Not only do I not pick up the paper from the bins on the street, I don’t even check the website anymore.  Indeed, I don’t even go to the CP’s RSS feed.

Well, OK.  Every week or two I’ll skim the RSS feeds; it’s the lowest possible impact on my day.

And I usually regret it.

Last week, Sun Country Airlines – the Twin Cities-based former charter line which has been trying for a little over a decade to make a go of daily service – announced that they were making changes to their service, including some new destinations.

Bear in mind, Sun Country’s had a bunch of strikes against them; they branched out from the lucrative charter business just in time for the airline industry to go through its huge spasm of contraction.  They had the same fuel price problems, and “nobody’s travelling due to the recession” problems that every other airline’s had.

And then they got bought by alleged ponzi artist Tom Petters.

To their credit, Sun Country had enough business savvy to survive the collapse of Petters’ empire.  And last week, in an attempt to emerge from the situation, they announced some new destinations to try to keep the financial pipeline flowing.

Emily Kaiser takes up the story from her – words fail – uniquely trival perspective:

We were sitting on the edge of our seats today when Sun Country airlines said they would be announcing a new destination from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. We had our eyes on warm weather wonders like Mexico, Puerto Rico, more California.

[Because when Sun Country is figuring out how to survive and keep its hundreds of employees working, “what can we do to attract a bunch of wage serfs from broke “alternative” newspapers” was the first question they answered.  But we digress. – Ed.]

They even had a big announcement out at the Mall of America like this was going to blow all of us away.

Drum roll please…. They are now flying to Branson, Mo.

Wait, what?

Wait what, what?

They’re going to start flying to where people with actual money are going, and where not every airline currently flies.  Because while

More from the FOX:

    

Branson is the 27th city served by Sun Country out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul hub.

The airline will fly to the popular tourist destination Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays and will feature a $79 one-way* introductory fare. Sun Country offers the only non-stop service to Branson out of the Twin Cities.

The Star Tribune tried to look on the bright side. It’s a good wholesome place for losers:

“Losers” with money to spend are something that smart businesspeople call “Winners”. 

For years, Branson has been a popular tourist attraction, with a wholesome lineup of musical acts as a counterbalance to the excesses of Las Vegas.

Among Branson’s offerings of late: ’50s at the Hop, the Oak Ridge Boys and Sunday Gospel Jubilee. “The addition of Branson is a positive step for Sun Country’s future,” said Stan Gadek, chairman and CEO of Sun Country.

We beg to differ. Boring and tarnishing the airline’s image as a carrier that actually brings you to fun and warm places.

Er, Emily?  They still fly to Ixtapa, Cancun, St. Maarten, South Padre, Cozumel, Cabo, Puerto Vallarta…

…all the places they’ve always taken the bobbleheaded children of excessive privilege to marinade their brains in overpriced Sex On The Beaches and ponder why the grownup world is so mean.

I don’t read the “City Pages” all that much – while ten years ago it frequently did better long-form reporting than the dailies, today it’s a glorified college paper/ad handout.

Still, it’s good for the occasional laugh.

We’ve discussed Emily Kaiser before.  She seems to have inherited the political beat from the likes of GR Anderson and Mike Mosedale (themselves guys with, let’s say, opportunities as political reporters and commentators).

And like a lot of inheritances, it’s not working all that well, in this piece entitled “Republicans Don’t Really Like Pawlenty”.  See if you can figure out the problem with that premise before Ms. Kaiser does.  I’ll add emphasis for the benefit of anyone who takes the City Pages seriously:

The Conservative Political Action Committee straw poll must have been a real blow to Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s confidence this weekend. It turns out Republicans don’t like him much. He was seriously beat out by real winners in life: Gov. Bobby Jindal (Kenneth the Page) and Gov. Sarah Palin. That really hurts.

At CPAC’s annual conference Saturday in Washington, Republicans participated in a straw poll of potential 2012 presidential candidates. Pawlenty received just 2 percent of the vote, was second to last, and only beat out Charlie Crist.

Kaiser misses the blazingly obvious, even though she write the answer in black and white.

Emilyi It was the Conservative Political Action Conference!  Not the “Republican Political Action Conference”. Many Republicans are not conservatives.  Many – Chuck Hagel, Jim Ramstad, Ron Erhard, Olympia Snowe – are indistinguishable from Democrats.
And while you, Emily, are a Minnesota liberal who would seem to have trouble telling Arne Carlson apart from Rush Limbaugh, Pawlenty is no doctrinaire conservative.  Oh, he ran to the right to get nominated in 2002; he’s tried, against increasingly long odds, to hold the line on the the DFL’s psychotic spending.

But – and I realize this is tough for you, Emily, who have no doubt been trained to think that Republicans and Conservatives are monochrome thud-wits – Pawlenty is not seen as a movement conservative.

So the “Conservative Political Action Conference” might be expected to vote for…

…what?

Conservatives.

Like Romney and Jindal and Palin, and not the likes of Pawlenty and Crist.

It’s not a sign that Pawlenty’s in trouble with Repblicans.  It’s a sign that he either has to burnish his credentials among conservatives (and I think conservatives sell him short) or hope that there is a sea of disenfranchised moderates out there.