First things first; congrats to the MinnPost’s David Brauer on having his first ambulance ride end fairly benignly.

And yes – it is certainly a small world. Brauer called an ambulance after experiencing shortness of breath and chest pains:

The Minneapolis fire guys were there immediately; their quick read of my vitals didn’t scream heart attack. A minute or so later, the ambulance crew was on the scene. After being appraised of my non-demise, the crew’s paramedic asked me a question I wasn’t expecting:

“Hey David, do you recognize me?”

He did look vaguely familiar.

“Duke Powell.”

I laughed even though it hurt.

Although we’ve never met face-to-face, Duke and I are Twitter friends. Via @dbrauer, I follow him at @dukepowell.

The saga, to an extent, did play out on Twitter over the weekend.  Duke is a longtime friend of this blog, a former GOP representative from the Burnsville area who lost a heartbreaker of a race in 2006.

Burnsville’s loss is the first-responder profession’s gain, of course, as Brauer found:

Of course, politics doesn’t matter much when you’re strapped to a gurney and wheeled through the snow. But it was definitely reassuring to have a member of my social network be part of my survival network…Duke expertly threaded my IV (the nurses would later marvel at the precision), gave me the short course on nitroglycerin (a precaution; headaches approaching) and kept it light but not unprofessional. In short, his actions buttressed the trust we’d already established.

Brauer waxes just a tad philosophical:

Our politics are as different as can be (Duke was a conservative Republican legislator from Burnsville), but we’re both Coleman-Franken junkies. For some reason, Twitter has been a place where lefties and righties can actually talk to each other; perhaps it’s because the medium is young, or you pick who you follow.

There’s something to that – although Minnesota is blessed with many forums where people can talk across the aisle:  the Northern Alliance Radio Network earned kudos from Mayor Rybak for our interview with him; the MDE/MNPublius Happy Hour last summer was a lot of fun.  And this Saturday’s MOB party should be like all previous ones; a fun, utterly civil time for everyone involved.

Oh, yeah – there’s more good news; Duke’s finally blogging:

If you want to read Duke’s version, check out his new Ambulance Driver blog. I’m Patient #5 on Feb. 27. Don’t worry; Duke doesn’t violate patient confidentiality here — I’m the one outing myself.

Hope both Brauer and Powell can show up on Saturday, and re-enact the scene – substituting Guinness for the nitro, natch.

Buckle in.  There’s gonna be flak:

It’s Steve Perry, formerly of the City Pages, Daily Mole and The Minnesoros “Independent”.  These days, he’s working for Sarah Janecek’s essential Politics In Minnesota. 

And – mirabile dictu – he’s discovered that, as a result of the DFL’s “listening tour”, people really are happy to pay for a Better Minnesota government that wants for nothing whatsoever:

Last night I spent some time talking to a DFL House member who has attended some of the budgetary road shows (“listening sessions”) that legislators have been staging around the state in the past week-plus. There was an air of surprise about his words. “Look,” he said by way of preface, “the people attending these things are a self-selected group. It’s not scientific. But it really struck me that people get the fact we can’t do this”–fix the state’s $6 or $7 billion budget gap, that is–“with spending cuts alone. Revenue has to be up for discussion. Real people are saying that, not just organized interests or the official representatives of groups.”

Was he saying the public is ahead of the politicians on this one?

I’m sure he was saying exactly that. 

Or at least, the carefully–stacked selection of the public that the DFL is pimping out at these “listening tour” stops.

Danger!  Flak!

Stimulus dollars go to turning capable journalists into gabbling, addlepated, conspiracy-theory-mouthing ninnies!

No, really!

Taxdollars are being used to train Pioneer Press in what I do, when I am not paid!

That’d be Grace Kelly, over at The Heartbreak of Spirochaetal Paresis Minnesota Short Bus Project.

So whaddya think, all you journos out there; you wanna get paid to do what Grace Kelly does – babble like a half-trained macaw?

Paul Schmelzer, writing for the Minnesoros “Independent”, barks on command:

It occurs to me that there is a rather simple pattern to [Rep. Michele] Bachmann’s belief system, ” writes Jason Linkins on Huffington Post. “…[I]f it was a rumor on the interwebs, Bachmann believes it!” Indeed, on this very page we speculated that Bachmann’s 2007 claim to know about plans to partition Iraq to “create a terrorist safe haven zone” may have come from a satirical posting online.

So because “Jason Linkins” – a person so thud-witted he uses the word “interwebs” in an apparently unironic sense – says it, and gives two examples, it must be true!

Hang in there, Paul; you might be able to get a job with Dump Bachmann at this rate.

I mean, while Schmelzer circulates the internet-spawned meme that Bachmann (and all “fundies”) be dum, he works for a “news” outlet that thinks lefty conventional wisdom (and the Colbert Report) are unimpeachable sources, with comical results.

I report.  You deride.

Joe “Chloe” Bodell at Minnesota Short Bus – a “blog” that hosts 9/11 truther Grace Kelly, the always indignant-to-the-point-of-incontinence anonyblogger “Two Putt Tommy” [blogging motto: “Rage is evidence!”] and Eric “Big” Pusey,  “writes”:

The political media establishment in Washington D.C. is increasingly disconnected from reality.

The sky turned blue tomorrow.

I’ll be guesting on Radio Free Nation on BlogTalkRadio tonight with Marty Owings and a cast of characters.

I’m the token conservative guest – one on three.

And it’s still not a fair fight.

Barack Obama’s election hasn’t eased the fever dreams of his most deranged supporters.

Grace Kelly, 9/11 Truther, writing at “The Heartbreak of Spirochaetal Paresis” “Minnesota Progressive Project”, took a moment to publicize a black hole of vacuity.

Oops – I missed it.  Bummer:

Sometimes truth can only be found by looking at history. This Sunday the Critical Thinking Club, St. Paul Chapter, is looking at 9/11. Everyone is invited and the cost is $3 or $10. Here are the details:

Location: Kelly Inn, Rice Street and I-94

Date: February 8, 2009

Gosh.  Go to church and have a day, or spend a gorgeous morning stuck in a room with a bunch of – I normally hesitate to talk this way on this blog, trying as I do to maintain a modicum of comity and respect – gabbling idiots who are drooling over their BDS-spawned fever dreams?

A time for choosing indeed.

“Grace” babbles onward:

Now those of you who still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that we were not lied into the Iraq war. you are probably not emotionally ready to consider that many elements of 9/11 are a lie. For me, it comes down to why the third building WTC 7 collapsed, as fast as a falling rock, very cleanly into its own footprint, when it had been hit by NO plane and had very little damage, especially compared to nearby buildings? For those who like mysteries and mind puzzles, this is one of the best. If you have never questioned what happened at 911, you might start here or do your own research.

Or just do like Kelly does, and mindlessly drone on and on like a hypnotized chimpanzee about the twaddle she’s gotten from her fellow deranged simpletons.

She’s been corrected before, of course, several times.  You be the judge.

The real tragedy?  Her vote counts the same as yours.

Spend the next 22 months remembering that.

The “Brady Campaign” is mad at Minnesota:

Minnesota has weak gun control laws, says a national group.

Let’s stop there.  The link is to a piece by Joe Kimball at the MinnPost.  Kimball has a track record as a decent reporter, to be fair.

But he calls Brady a “national group”.  Now, I don’t expect Joe Kimball, employed as he is by a “progressive” agenda-news outlet, to call Brady “a group whose numbers, “research” and claims have been roundly debunked at nearly every turn for the past 25 years”, which would be true, albeit highly perspective-based. 

But Kimball can’t even call Brady “a national gun-control advocacy group”,  – which would be honest, non-partisan and factual.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence says Minnesota’s laws “help feed the the illegal gun market, allow the sale of guns without background checks and put children at risk.”

The group gives Minnesota only 11 points out of 100 in a checklist of laws. That ties us for 23rd among the 50 states.

In other words, “failing” is the mainstream! 

We do get passing grades on holding gun owners accountable for leaving guns accessible to kids and for giving cities authority to hold gun makers legally liable.

We also have a waiting period on gun sales, limitations on “junk” handguns — Saturday night specials — but on many other possible laws, like a ban on assault weapons and limitations on large-capacity ammunition magazines, we don’t fit their bill.

Because Minnesota, like most states, realizes that none of them make any difference in public safety (and bans on “Saturday Night Specials” merely make guns unaffordable for poor people, usually in crappy neighborhoods). 

The real question isn’t that Brady is lying and misrepresenting fact – that’s been their stock in trade for a generation. 

The real question is, why can’t the local lefty “alternative” media report on this issue any more clearly and honestly than the bigs?

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci at KAR despatches the latest leftyblog blood libel group seizure – in this case, last week’s Eva-Young-like outburst on MNPublius over Norm Coleman’s recount site crashing:

Landry’s lying (or, alternatively he’s just another dumbass political hack) (or both, actually). Here’s why:

Crashing tends to happen to websites not designed to handle 100,000 visitors at once, when Drudge sends 100,000 visitors at them.

Aaron Landry: lying liar telling lies. Liar.

And when one leftyblog writes something?  They all do, natch:

UPDATE: Well of course SorosNet would copy and paste the Franken version of the story without asking questions. That’s what they get paid for. Because, you know, crashing has never ever happened to a website before now.

Leftyblogs:  Distrust but verify.  And then distrust some more.

I usually try to keep my criticisms of lefties, and leftism, substantive and fact-based.

Being human, I occasionally resort to sarcasm, humor and snark.  And you know it’s part of the reason you come here, so don’t try and get cute about it.

Sometimes, the best I can manage is a point-by-point fisking.

But in almost seven years of blogging, this is the first time I’ve had to sit back, scratch my eyes, re-read something, and decide that simply presenting the offending material in its full, dim, foul glory is all the criticism that material needs.

And so I present Grace Kelly – local 9/11 Truther and cog in the local DFL machine.  Her particularly wide-eyed, fabulist brand of jackboot-with-a-smile liberalism has turned up on this blog a few times in the past.

But she’s outdone herself this time.  She has summed up the collective id of the Democrat base in this country, in much the same way Rain Man summed up the cards in the casino, and presented it to the world in the form of a poem.

Lead Us President Barack Obama

At a time of darkness, the light appears
– that light is President Barack Obama.

At a time when knowledge, skill and science was disdained, a champion of knowledge, skill and science has stepped forward
– that champion is President Barack Obama.

At a time when it seemed that only corporations and the rich were represented, a representative of people appeared
– that representative is President Barack Obama.

At a time of torture, a leader of morality appears
– that leader is President Barack Obama.

At a time when the world no longer respects us as country, a reason for respect appears
– that reason is President Barack Obama.

At a time of too many wars and too much violence, we look for the wisdom of peace and diplomacy,
– that wisdom is President Barack Obama.

At a time of great economic crisis, a president who leads comes,

lead us President Barack Obama, speak for us,
lay out your plan of action,

And we the people will say
YES. WE. CAN!

I’ve been staring at this for ten minutes.

Have at it, all.  I’ve got everything…and yet nothing.

UPDATE: An emailer sends:

At a time with no flushable toilets

a man invented such a toilet

And that man was Thomas Crapper

UPDATE 2: Another emailer:

At at time when freshness eluded us
a man made freshness attainable.
And that man was Irving Douchebag.

Keep ’em coming!

UPDATE 3: The hits keep coming

At a time when bands’ names were lame, and balloons were merely toys
A man came a long and fixed both.
And that man was Count Von Zeppelin.

More!  More!

Steve “Mister Furious” Perry, who spent many years as one of the Twin Cities’ better journalist while the editor of the City Pages, several months as a lone crank at The Daily Mole, and about a year editing a bald-faced propaganda mill at the Minnesoros “Independent”, has not only gigged up, but done it in some style, landing both at the MinnPost  and at Sarah Janecek’s Politics in Minnesota.

Congrats, Steve Perry. Let’s hope you can get back to form.
David Brauer reflects (dimes will get you dollars) the mainstream view among the Twin Cities’ landed punditry in this MinnPost bit that proves that Brauer is from Planet Dinkytown:

It’s great news on several fronts. Perry is a polemicist of the best sort, equally at home excoriating ideological Republicans and hypocritical Democrats.

I suppose when your perspective is from as far to the left as Brauer’s it’s possible to say that with a straight face.   And as I’ve noted probably more than any other Twin Cities pundit (certainly more than any on the right), Perry has had his moments; indeed, a 1994 City Pages piece on concealed carry (which, if memory serves, Perry wrote) was just about the first genuinely balanced look at the subject in the Twin Cities mainstream media.
But let’s quit blowing sunshine; Perry would never have gotten a job at a George Soros propaganda mill like the “Independent” if his record had been anywhere close to genuinely balanced from the point of view of someone closer to the mythical center than Brauer.
“But Mitch – how far is Brauer from that mythical center?”  Read on:

(Indeed, his willingness to do the latter is a big reason he separated from his last bosses at the harm-no-progressive Minnesota Independent.) With an ideological governor, a so-far-cautious DFL legislature and a gaping budget deficit, Perry’s insights have never been more timely.

Pawlenty is ideological?

Never mind…

Not to be underestimated is the entertainment factor. PIM publisher Sarah Janecek’s last pairing with a true lefty — her KTLK radio show with Brian Lambert — ended in Aykroyd-Curtin bickering that was epic and horrifying to watch.

The show was kind of a mess – I wrote about it a few years ago –  but not because of the ideologies involved; while Lambert makes Brauer and Perry look like Scoop Jackson and Sam Nunn, Janecek – a good friend of this blog and the NARN, by the way – is no hard-line conservative.  A great writer, a force of nature, one of Minnesota’s great political personalities, yes, but she’s no Ann Coulter (whom I’d pay to  hear co-hosting a show with, and flensing, Lambert).

Like matter and antimatter, this latest strong-willed combo could end up annihilating the universe, but would be a clickfest before the world explodes.

“Annihilating the universe?”  Wow – y’all are hard-up for ratings!

Have no fear; the online world is a lot more controllable than radio.

Anyway, best of luck to Sarah and Steve and the whole PIM crew.

Note to Twin Cities’ Leftybloggers:  Please, please try to get your facts straight when you want to try to noodle about with issues I genuinely care about.  You might get Haugenned.

Fair warning.

Liberal in the Land of Conservative writes:

HOLY CRAP, the Democratic leadership in Congress is pushing the Fairness Doctrine. Who are the magical creatures that can pass a doctrine without nary a bill in existence?

Dear LITLOC:  Congresspeople, thanks to the miracle of “voices”, the “First Amendment” and “the Media”, can say things outside the context of “bills”.  For example, they can tell a reporter “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”  That’d be Dick “Turban” Durbin.  Bear in mind, he said that without authoring a bill on the subject.

Yet.

And – just so’s you learn something, LITLOC – let’s be clear; Congress needn’t pass a single bill to reinstate the “Fairness” Doctrine.  If Obama puts three pro-Doctrine members on the FCC Board, the “Doctrine” can become fact again by executive fiat; no legislation will be needed, beyond confirmation hearings.  This, indeed, is the most dangerous scenario for supporters of free speech; Obama (and the smarter Dems) don’t want to pee on the third rail by legislating censorship – but how much political capital do you think Obama will burn getting in the way of an allied bureaucracy doing it for them?

Seriously, I thought Mitch Berg was supposed to be the smart one.

Among conservative bloggers?  No. I’m the cute one.

Compared to Twin Cities’ leftybloggers?  In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Do your homework, kids.  You’re gonna need to.

For the past couple of years, we’ve gone to the Minnesoros Monitor and “Independent” for shrill, frequently inaccurate, often risible lefty propaganda.

Fastidious fact-checking?  Naaah.

Now, as I’ve noted before, I’m not Catholic.  I’m a committed Protestant.

But when I see Paul “Not The Dumbest Writer The Mindy Has” Schmelzer writing a story with a hed like “Vatican body: Minnesota professor’s sin worse than genocide“, I figured it was “worth” a read (where “worth” equals “barely”, and “read” means “mining for fisking material”); emphasis added by me:

While Catholic bishops and priests can hear confessions about sins as severe as murder or genocide, the Vatican’s 830-year-old Apostolic Penitentiary is “reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious,” writes the UK’s Telegraph. In Rome this week, this secretive “tribunal of conscience” held a two-day panel to discuss what it does and how it works. Crimes so grave they can only be absolved by the pope include attempting to assassinate the pontiff, directly participating in (or funding) abortion or desecrating the Eucharist. The inclusion of that last sin seems to put University of Minnesota professor PZ Myers in a worse class of sinner, in the eyes of Catholics, than genocidal dictators. The Telegraph even mentions the atheist biology professor, who blogged about his desecration of a communion wafer last summer, although it’s not clear from the article whether his case was specifically discussed by the Apostolic Penitentiary:

So in other words, the headline creates a misleading impression that there’s a connection between Myers’ act of sophomoric vandalism and the Vatican’s discussion…

…but no matter.  It’s not unknown for “local” news sources to dig too hard for the local angle.

But here’s the real question – and I’m gonna need your help, especially were “you” are Catholics.  As when the Mindy tries to “report” about guns, economics, history, crime, money, or facts, their reporting about religion has always been not only one-sided, but usually wrong.  Schmelzer’s graf tickles my “stink test” sensor, but I don’t know why – because, again, I’m a Protestant.
So I’ll open this up for a group fisk by the assembled commentariat.   How does Schmelzer (or, one might reasonably presume, his overlords in DC) get this wrong?

Note, borne of years of blogging experience:  when leftybloggers start attributing conservatives’ actions to having “crushes”, just tune them out.

However, in this case…

A new video posted today shows more footage from the event, including evidence of what appears to be a Coulter crush on former Sen. Norm Coleman.

…I don’t think I ever tuned Chris Steller in in the first place.

Oh, yeah:

Franken, at one point gesturing as if his skull was exploding, asks, “What does that mean?! What does that mean?!”

I bet we’ll see a lot of that after Franken gets seated in the Senate.

To:  Jeff Fecke

From:  Mitch Berg

Re:  Apology

Jeff,

 Your appearance on Prager yesterday was not a real career highlight, let’s just say.

But while your premise started from a distortion, proceeded through a weak argument and, in the end, a disingenuous attempt to distance yourself from your own hours-old writing on the subject, your approach was at least not as puzzlingly silly as that of your guest-host, “Center for “Independent” Media” capo Robin “Rew” Marty…

I, too, think Dennis Prager has sex issues, but, unlike Fecke, I’m willing to say it’s likely because he’s really bad in bed.  See!  We can have lots of fun together.

…where “fun” equals really dim ad-homina. 

Wheeee!

Anyway, Jeff, I’m sorry. I  wrote too soon.

With the news of the Minnesoros “independent”‘s layoffs, it’s good to see that the “Center for Independent Media” is hiring…

…editors for the home office, to run all those “independent” news blogs:

TWI’s publisher, the non-profit Center for Independent Media is looking for two news editors to shape the editorial direction of a network of sites across the country. The jobs are based in Washington, in the same offices as TWI.Full job description and instructions on how to apply after the jump.

“Shape the editorial direction” of a bunch of sites all named “Independent”.

I’ll just let that rattle around the cranium for a bit.

It hardly seems like it’s been three years since the staff of this blog issued the first-ever “Shot In The Dark Academy Of Blogging Art, Science and Engineering Awards For MetaJournalistic AntiExcellence” – known and loved as the “Shooties”. During those three years, the online metajournalistic world has expanded – and, like a Peter-Principled fog, opportunities for really bad metajournalism have expanded anon.

And so, last night at a gala at Northrop Auditorium, the staff of Shot In The Dark and an assembled audience of 3,000 of the creme de la creme of the elite of the elite gathered to bestow these awards, and to look ahead to next year. It was a dazzling display of fashion and blogging star power (marred only slightly by JB Doubtless’ tipsy recitation of his favorite slam poetry of 2006) highlighted by appearances by Marisa Tomei, Metallica and beer expert Michael Jackson.

(Technical awards were given the previous week at the Minneapolis Grayhound station, and were all won by Joe Bodell).

And so without further ado – a tradition unlike many others: The Shootie Awards for 2008!

The Andy Dick Whiny B**ch Award For B***hy Whinyness: Need I say more?

The Daniel Pearl Profiles in Journalistic Courage Award: This one goes to Molly “Is It White In Here” Priesmeyer of the Minnesoros “Independent”. Last March, she wrote:

…it’s at least refreshing to see McCain’s teeth get a razzing (though, unfortunately, not a cleaning). It gets a little tiring listening to the same sexist cries that Hillary Clinton is just too ugly to be president. Hatin’ on the looks of all the candidates? Now that’s equality!

The next day, she noted to MDE that, schwoops, she wasn’t aware that McCain’s teeth had been beaten out of his face while a POW in Vietnam:

I was not aware of the fact. I simply was linking to a post that revealed “his teeth” had become a topic of discussion on the blogosphere. Buzzfeed.com is an aggregator site that collects trends of the day.

The “Mindy” – all the news that’s fit for rich liberals to pay you to link to!

The Leona Helmsley “Accountability For Ye, but Not For We” Award: Last March, the Minnesoros Monitor “Independent”‘s Andy Birkey chided Rep. Michele Bachmann for eschewing appearances on the local tanning-bed media, preferring to stick to conservative and Christian news outlets (an approach that was pretty roundly vindicated closer to election time). I asked Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senate Candiate Al Franken, Representatives Keith Eillson and Betty McCollum, and mayors R.T Rybak and Chris Coleman for interviews on the NARN or, if their schedules didn’t permit, on my blog.

Mayor Rybak earned my respect by accepting the invitation.

None of the others responded to repeated inquiries.

The Cliff Clavin Award For Unintentional Comedic Self-Glamorization: Grace Kelly at MNBlue MnProgressiveProject some wackjob commieblog knows who the real heroes are.

DFL volunteers.

The Mao Zhedong “We Are Identically Diverse” Award: Lori Sturdevant has given so much to this award ceremony every year; she’s a serious contender for a lifetime achievement award. This years’ paeon to “feminist unity” (behind left-leaning women only, naturally) was just one of dozens of potential choices from her oeuvre this past year.

The Baghdad Bob “We’re Not Laughing With You, We’re Laughing At You” Award: Mere weeks after the Minnesoros “Independent” laid off much of its staff at the behest of the “Center for “Independent” Media” (causing editor Steve Perry to realize that he’d been running a bald-faced propaganda rag roughly two years after every other person in the Twin Cities had twigged to the fact), Chris Steller complained unironically that the Coleman campaign was tossing the utterly dependent Steller from press conferences. (The NARN is still waiting on press credentials from Keith Ellison).

Post Title Of The Year: While there were the usual avalanche of contenders, I found nothing better than Mr. Dilettante’s “Jesus Christ Oberstar“.

The Martin Luther King/Sermon On The Mount Award For Political Civility: Aaron Landry – MNPublius’ designated wind-up Frankenblogger – brought political discourse to a higher level.

The “Dewey Wins” Award For Gate-Keeping and Fact-Checking – This years’ award goes to the Minnsoros “Independent” (nee Monitor), for Dan Haugen’s “It Could Be Worse“. Background: during the spring legislative session, Rep. Tony Cornish (R – Good Thunder) sponsored a bill that would have clarified Minnesota’s rules for armed self-defense. While the rest of the Minnesota Sorosphere turned to actively lying about Cornish’s bill (see “Government Figure As Mushroom Farmer”, below), Haugen tried to wax humorous, snickering that at least Minnesotans weren’t proposing allowing guns in bars, like a bill in Tennessee proposed.

Unfortunately, being a highly trained “independent” “citizen journalist”, Haugen couldn’t be bothered to have found out that legal, unintoxicated (blood alcohol below .04%) permit holders are allowed to carry guns in bars in Minnesota.

The “C’mon, Thomas Jefferson – Work With King George!” Award: To the entire Twin Cities media and leftymedia (pardon the redundancy), for their nonstop pressure on the GOP to not just forgive and forget the Override Six for stabbing their party and constituents in the back, but to pretty much become DFLers anyway. As usual.

Government Official As Mushroom Farmer Award: This one goes to Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom, in his response to Rep. Cornish’s bill. Backstrom demonstrates the old adage – if you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance, just lie, since the media will back you up anyway.

And finally, the big kahuna – the one we’ve been waiting for all year:

The Charles Townsend Award – In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies’ protests against the Stamp Act, said:

“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?”

And this year’s winner is…

(Drum Roll)

Larry Pogemiller, “I think it’s simplistic and naive to say people can spend their money better than the government.”

That’s it for this year, folks! But stay tuned – 2009 promises to be a doozy!

ALSO:  Swiftee is giving out awards, too – and unlike the autocratic Shooties, you have a say!

I just got this: 

SAINT PAUL –  The office of Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty announces that the staff of the radio talk show the “Northern Alliance Radio Network” will be taking over the duties of the state press-relations office.

“We think this is a slapshot for good government, and will put us square in the net as far as cost savings and turnaround”, Governor Pawlenty said in an impromptu statement at the Capitol this morning. 

The State Press Office oversees all media relations for all branches of Minnesota’s state government, from the Legislature through the Executive Branch.

The outsourcing of PR services is expected to save the state 45 million dollars a year.  But not everyone is thrilled by the idea.

“I’m outraged…Outraged…” said Ashley Grot-Puttanesca-Steubingfelder of “Peace Through Mandatory Unity”, a non-partisan Saint Paul-based affiliate of ACORN, “…outraged [brief pause to re-collect her thoughts] that the government of Minnesota would turn this vital job over to a bunch of partisans“.

Speaking on behalf of the Northern Alliance/State Press Office, Deputy Press Officer Chad The Elder replied “What kind of name is Ashley Grot-Puttanesca-Steubingfelder?  Good lord, pour me a drink – she’s ugly”.

Satiric fantasy?

Oh, this is Minnesota under the control of the unfettered DFL.  Of course not.

UPDATE:  A bad analogy?  Provided all the UpTake – an overtly left-leaning organization – does is provide a commentary-free feed, perhaps. 

I’ve had questions about the slant of UpTake’s coverage of events; to be fair, they’ve quickly and fairly answered those questions (as, indeed, I seek to do with this update).  To be prudent, it’s perfectly fair to ask if a group can serve two masters – an agenda and “fairness”.

Is UpTake providing a useful service, and doing it fairly?  Perhaps.

Can they – and Secretary of State Richie – expect to be watched carefully?  Absolutely.

Zach at MNPublius is a giddy as a little girl over Katherine Kersten’s exit from the Strib:

I’m sad to see Coleman go, but (sorry Nick) if it means Kersten gets the ax, I’d dump him everyday of the week and twice on Tuesday.

You hate dissent and disagreement that much?

Wow.

By the way, I hope the Strib plans on having at least one conservative voice in their paper. I just hope its not a race baiting lunatic like Kersten.

Let’s take a step back.

From 2000 through about 2007, John McCain was, for umpteen million Democrats, “the ONLY Republican I’d vote for” and “the ONLY rational Republican“. That comity lasted until he was a contender, when he became “just like Bush”, “extremist” and “ultra-right”. To Democrats, the only good Republicans are either irrelevant or indistinguishable from Democrats.

So I’ll make you this guarantee; in the (unlikely) event that the Strib hires another conservative columnist, no matter how acceptable local lefties would have found him or her Twin Cities lefties might find that conservative today, once that person got into print, he or she would become the dumbest, craziest, most “extremist” writer they could think of at the moment.

In other words; when they actually matter in terms of influencing policy, every Republican, no matter how cerebral (and remember, Kersten’s background is mostly academic; she’s no talk radio brawler) becomes a “race baiting lunatic”.
Next up – Brian Lambert’s piece.

Chris Steller at the Minnesoros “Independent“: “Blagociation”

Although to be fair, Steller might not have written it; it could have been the M”indy”s editors at the Center for “Independent” Media.

I try to hope for the best in people.

The independent media world was shocked by revelations that the Minnesoros “Independent’s” recent layoffs occurred as the FBI was investigating Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on charges of corruption.

Officials from the Center for “Independent” Media – which controls the financing, story assignment and editing for the “Independent” – have not been reached for comment, and are otherwise suspiciously silent on the links between cuts to the “Independent” and the Blagojevich investigation . Calls to Citizen Journalist First Class Steve Perry went unreturned (as he has reportedly left the company – again, “coincidentally” right about the time Blagojevich’s investigation was about to boil over); calls to Citizen Journalists Second Class Paul Demko and Chris Steller haven’t been placed, since the call will be so very likely to wind up on an FBI wiretap.

The timing of these allegations come as allegations that the Minnesoros “Independent” hired Citizen Journalist Chris Steller immediately after ultraliberal financier George Soros sent a large payment to the Center for “Independent” Media continue to go unanswered.

Well, it’s not much more of a reach than this.

They sometimes say a gaffe is when a politician screws up and tells the truth.

By that token, journalistic malfeasance is when an MSM outlet accidentally doesn’t spin things in favor of Democrats.

The leftysphere was all afroth over this story in USA Today claiming that my native North Dakota was the most corrupt state in the union.

Oh, yes – they’re spinning for Illinois’ famously-corrupt Democrats:

On a per-capita basis, however, Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Department of Justice statistics.

But see if you can juuuuuuuust maybe find the clinker in USA Today’s story. I’ll provide emphasis, for those of you who get your news from the Minnesoros “Independent”:

The analysis does not include corruption cases handled by state law enforcement and it considers only convictions. Corruption may run more rampant in some states but go undetected.

Gosh. D’ya think? Places that convict fewer corrupt pols maybe more corrupt than ones that do?

It’s mildly sobering to see that Wonkette would seem to be the only leftyblog that twigged to the simple fact that, while the story claims North Dakota is the most corrupt, the metrics indicate that my reliably Republican home state is the most anti-corruption state:

However, one arrives at this metric by dividing the number of political corruption convictions in the past ten years by the number of residents. Thus, low-population states with normal-sized governments are disproportionately “corrupt,” as evidenced by the shameful badge of corruption affixed to neighboring South Dakota and Montana. Meanwhile, the truly corrupt states (Rhode Island, anyone?) emerge a shade better, because they never bother to arrest, or god forbid convict, their political criminals. Instead, they elect them Mayor of Providence.

KB notes:

There are international measures, most commonly used being the Transparency International rankings of bribe payers and corruption perceptions…Micro-level studies seemed to be more persuasive. I would argue that corruption is higher in places where the top pay of the private sector is greatest, which is not inconsiderable in Chicago.

While the North Dakota legislature makes $5 a day during its biennial session (no raises since the 1890’s), government work is actually a decent living in NoDak, where the general standard of living really isn’t all that high.

As usual, leftyblogs – great job. Just great!

Oh, the USA Today completes the leftymedia trifecta, adding a little ofay victimology (emphasis added):

Michael Johnston is a political science professor at Colgate University in New York — which is ranked just after Illinois for corruption convictions. Johnston, who has studied political corruption for 30 years, said places such as Illinois gain a bad reputation that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Expectations build up … and you replicate those expectations when you get to the top of the ladder,” Johnston said. “It gets repeated.”

“Blogojevich is a victim! He couldn’t help himself! It was expected of him!”

Sorry, USA Today. You call it “self-fulfilling prophecy”. We call it “culture of corruption”.

When I grew up, “Heroes” were people like…:

• Ernest Shackleton: In 1916, Shackleton was on an Antarctic expedition when his ship, HMS Endurance, was trapped, and then crushed, in pack ice.  There was no radio on the Endurance, so the crew of twenty-odd men were as on their own as could be, sort of like Gilligan’s Island, except stuck on an ice floe instead of a tropical paradise.  Shackelton managed to keep his entire crew alive on the ice (and then on a barren plug of rock in the South Atlantic, to which they rowed and sailed in open lifeboats for several days) for two years, living on penguins and seal meat.  And when after those two years the crew was fading fast, he led three other men in a canvas-covered lifeboat with a jury-rigged sail on an 800-mile voyage, across a South Atlantic that makes the Barents Sea in Dangerous Catch look like Lake Calhoun during a summer squall, using simple hand-held navigational instruments, to South Georgia Island, which with its tiny whaling station was the nearest civilization.  An error of so much as a single degree in navigating in the storm in the wet boat with the sextant, chronometer and map would have left the men hopelessly lost – and yet they found South Georgia.  And then climbed a mountain across the middle of the island to get help.  That’s a hero.
• Stanislaus Schmajzner:  A Jewish teenager who’d been arrested by the Nazis, Schmajzner was taken to the Sobibor extermination camp (like Auschwitz, only less famous).  There, he lied about having a trade, falsely claiming to be a cobbler, a lie that saved his life (the German guards at the camp needed a cobbler; Jews without needed trades went to the gas chambers).  The inmates, watching the slaughter around them (over a quarter of a million died at Sobibor) realized that the only hope for any of them to die with dignity, much less survive, was to rise up, try to kill their guards and, if they survived, make a run for the woods.  Schmajzner showed an ingenuity at camouflage and smuggling (among many other of the inmates in on the plot) that was of immense help to the Jews.  Finally, the Jews launched their rebellion, killing enough guards to make it through the gate (as the surviving guards machine-gunned them without mercy).  Perhaps a couple of hundred made it to the woods; maybe thirty, including Schmajzner, survived the war.  Schmajzher emigrated to Brazil, eventually, but spent the rest of his life educating people about the Holocaust.  That’s a hero.
• Donald Ruhl:  Donald Who?  Sadly, that’s right.  Donald Ruhl was a 21 year old Private First Class in the US Marines from Columbus, Montana.  He was a combat veteran – he’d fought in the brutal compaign on Bougainville, earlier in the war.  He landed with the rest of the 28th Marine Regiment (Fifth Marine Division) on Iwo Jima in the winter of 1945.  On the second day of the battle, on the approaches to Mount Suribachi…well, I’ll let his Congressional Medal of Honor citation do the talking:  “[Ruhl] crawled with his platoon guide to the top of a Japanese bunker to bring fire to bear on enemy troops located on the far side of the bunker, suddenly a hostile grenade landed between the two Marines. Instantly Private First Class Ruhl called a warning to his fellow Marine and dived on the deadly missile, absorbing the full impact of the shattering explosion in his own body and protecting all within range from the danger of flying fragments although he might easily have dropped from his position on the edge of the bunker to the ground below.”  That, too, is a hero.

Those, I believe, are heroes.

Grace Kelly – who helped make the old MNBlue such a disgrace that it had to merge with Joe Bodell’s bad-but-not-quite-as-disgraceful Minnesota Campaign Report to form the Minnesota “Progressive” Project blog, writes:

Around this holiday season, I like to say “Thank You” to people who serve unnoticed. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor party has many people who work so hard to create better communities and better government. This is mostly volunteer work with a few underpaid jobs.These are the everyday heroes!

That sure brings “meaning” to the term “everyday heroes”. 

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci – who, by Grace’s generous definition of “hero” certainly is one, except that he’s not a DFLer – grants these heroes what is, for heroes in our society (at least, the ones that don’t dash into burning buildings to save others, or volunteer to leave their families for a year to defend Code Pink from being rounded up and beheaded) the ultimate recognition; being immortalized in one of those Budweier “Real American Heroes” spots. 

Go read it.  It’s enough to make you want…

…to…

…sing:

DEEP THROATED NARRATOR: Shot In The Dark presents…Real DFL Heroes

OVERWROUGHT MULLETED SINGER: ♫ Real DFL heeeeroooooes ♫

NARRATOR: Today we salute YOU, Mr. Paid Leftyblogger!!

OMS: ♫ Mizz Anonymously-Paid Leftyblogger!!♫

NARRATOR: While the rest of the world goes on with their lives, you devote yourself to the eternal quest; finding an original way to try to photoshop Michele Bachmann…

OMS: ♫ “Ain’t that woman cra-zeee?”♫

NARRATOR: When questioned about your funding, you respond the way  your group always has; “Soros?  Who’s George Soros?”

OMS: ♫ Never heaaard of him!♫

NARRATOR: But at the end of the day, you’re the one who Twin Cities lefties can count on to break the monopoly of the conservative Star/Tribune, and tell the truth!

OMS: ♫ Pawlenty lied and people died! ♫

NARRATOR: So pop open a Corona, Mister Anonymously-Paid Leftyblogger! Because at the end of the day, when Media Matters says “Jump”, someone has to answer “Off What?”

OMS: ♫ Mister Anonymously-Paid Leftyblogger♫

NARRATOR: Shot In The Dark, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

[Hee Haw on] Saaaa-LUTE![/Hee Haw off].

Not a dry eye in the place, I tells ya.

Two bits of news from talk radio that tie into a larger industry-wide trend.

Brain Maloney notes that Citadel Radio – one of the chains of broadcasters that has led the way in trying to jam left-leaning programming down the listeners throats, and largely failing (judging by their stock, which has gone from a solid hold to a penny stock in the past two years), is running the pointless Joe Scarborough and the execrable Mika Brezinski on their flagship station WABC in New York.

Maloney:

In fact, the decision to insert MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski into WABC’s midmorning slot is exactly how Citadel – ABC Radio got into this mess in the first place.Since the ill-fated merger of [Citadel and the old ABC Radio], Citadel’s upper management has struggled to grasp news-talk and what drives listenership. Instead of learning more about this highly-successful medium’s audience characteristics, CEO Farid Suleman has compelled stations to comply with a series of increasingly-bizarre programming edicts, of which this is merely the latest.

It’s nothing new, of course.  Since the aftermath of the 2004 elections, a lot of high-power consultants – the ones whom Rush Limbaugh caught by surprise – have been saying “conservative talk is dead”, and doing their best to prove it by killing off the stations they program.

This is manifested in ways small (the ongoing morphing of KSTP-AM into WCCO) and, in WABC’s case, big:

[Suleman’s] latest fiasco debuted yesterday, made possible by the recent removal of longtime WABC honcho Phil Boyce. One longtime major market radio programmer who monitored the broadcast told your Radio Equalizer that it “sounds like a train wreck on the air. Maybe this is the making of a new horror movie: When CEOs Program.” He further called it “just MSNBC on the radio.”

Without a skilled programming coach to guide Joe and Mika, both rank amateurs when it comes to talk radio, the program lacked focus. It skipped around haphazardly between topics and guests, which included MSNBC insiders such as David Gregory and Tom Brokaw.

Perhaps Suleman knows something we don’t.

Perhaps Harry Reid tipped him off that the Fairness Doctrine will not only be re-enacted immediately after inauguration, but enforced brutally, and it’s best to get ahead of the curve by filling your lineup with innocuous center-left talking heads who won’t offend the new regime and its mass of informants (who will be the engine driving the Doctrine).

In a related matter: while KSTP-AM has been floating aimlessly down this road for years, since the departure of Rush Limbaugh and Jason Lewis, programming innocuous hamsters like Willie and Jay, innocuous drive-time sportstalk with Matt Thomas, and mostly-apolitical social-curmudgeon with a thin veneer of “crusty reactionary” Joe Soucheray, who has been doing the same show to the same audience for (counts in his head) around fifteen years.

Now, “TBD” is replacing Mischke in the noon-2pm slot.  Yesterday, TBD was Jim Souhan, sports reporter at the Strib.  It was a bit of deja vu, going back to the days when KSTP seemed to think that any newspaper reporter could run a talk show; Nick Coleman, Catherine Lanpher, Jim Klobuchar and scads of other Strib and PiPress reporters and sportswriters paraded through the studio (including, to be fair, James Lileks).

Deja vu, also, in that it was just plain awful – like most newspaper (and TV) people are when they try talk radio.  It wandered aimlessly.  It skimmed past stories without giving anyone (in the forty-five or so minutes I wasted) a reason to pay it any attention.

It sounded, I thought, like pre-1987 talk radio.

I’m just gonna let that hang there for a while.

Steve “Mister Furious” Perry is out at the Minnesoros “Independent”, says David Brauer: 

This is the other shoe dropping after MnIndy’s parent, Center for Independent Media, announced last month that the staff was being pared, freelance budget eliminated, and editing centralized in Washington, D.C.

“Independent” media with “centralized” editing!

CIM, a nonprofit, has been under fire locally for badgering its staff to, in the words of ex-freelancer Britt Robson, run “stories that embarrassed Republicans and promoted Democrats.”

That ran counter to Perry’s “pox-on-all-power” ethos honed to a knife’s edge during his many years as City Pages’ editor.

While Learned Foot is right – Perry did a lot more poxing the right than the left over the years, and there was a reason he worked for a left-leaning group and was in charge of an assembly of committed lefties that – I’ll give him that much. 

Under Perry, City Pages overtook the Twin Cities Reader as the top local alt-weekly; [although the Reader’s complete demise in 1991 may have helped that – Ed.] since his February hiring, MnIndy’s traffic has soared, as this chart demonstrates. It was definitely a team effort — reaching a high point during the Republican National Convention — but Perry hired several members of that team.

And the world thanks him for keeping Karl Bremer in the headlines.  (Whooee).

Update II: A Perry ex-colleague asks whether Perry’s Daily Mole will make a comeback. From the looks of the cute 404 message, not imminently.

With ad budgets drying up and (who are we kidding) the political need for lefty propaganda sites diminished (for the next year or so, anyway), I can’t imagine a worse time to try to re-establish something like the Daily Mold, at least if “earning a living” is an issue.

Does Perry have enough friends at the MNPost to make a go of it?  Would he take a gig there if offered?  What else is in the wings for Mister Furious?

Oh, well.  All the best, Perry.