Caterwauling.

Whinging.

Yapping.

Argling.

Whinnying.

Squealing.

Sniveling.

Screeching.

Sobbing.

Bellyaching.

Caviling.

Grousing.

Kvetching.

Grumbling.

Yammering.

Those are the first fifteen synonyms I can think of for “Whining”.  Which is the sole verb every “progressive” blogger seems to use to describe “any of our opponents talking or writing”.

I can only assume you “progressive” bloggers’ superiors haven’t told you to write anything else…

UPDATE:

Mewling.

Gargling.

Puling.

Gurgitating.

Maladicting.

Frumping.

Eeyoring.

Even simple ol’ complaining!

Still haven’t had to go to a thesaurus.

I”m starting to think the only “smart” thing about “progressives” is the way they branded themselves as “the smart people”.

If you were paying attention during the Wisconsin recall (also every other political campaign since the rise of the alt-media in the early nineties), you could not only note that the left was claiming that conservative billionaires were influencing the media – you could have predicted it.

Because you, a discerning media customer, know of Berg’s Seventh Law:  to wit, “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.

So you just knew this was going to come out:

Conservative foundations have poured big bucks into new Wisconsin websites that do original opposition research supporting Republican candidates.

[Note to conservative billionaires; some of us in Minnesota would be more than happy to help]

But it’s not like deep-pocketed liberal institutions are sitting on their hands.

Foundations created and funded by billionaire philanthropist and noted liberal George Soros have sunk money into two new media projects in the state – the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and MapLight.

And – you guessed it – it’s a lot more money than there was on the conservative side.

Read the whole thing.

Minnesota is heading for a battle over redistricting that may just make the just-passed budget battle look like a stroll in the park.

And, just like with every such battle lately in Minnesota, there is at least one “non-partisan” non-profit claiming to have the interests of average, non-affiliated Minnesotans at heart.  There are a couple of reasons for this; for starters, the Minnesota DFL is a largely impotent organization;

In the 2010 elections, of course, it was “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and a small circle of other groups – “The 2010 Fund”  – a group that funnelled millions of dollars from unions, the Dayton family, and their cronies to try to win the election for Mark Dayton (largely by running a toxic sleaze campaign).  Their power in “progressive” circles is remarkable; Governor Dayton has brought a fair number of ABM’s staffers to work in his office; the former head of the “2010 Fund”, Ken Martin, now runs the DFL.

And for the redistricting battle?  The new astroturf group is “Draw The Line”, an organization that spans several states where the Democrats are fighting for their organizational lives, including Minnesota.

So who’s behind “Draw the Line?”  And what are they after – and by “they”, I don’t mean “Draw The Line”, so much as the people behind them?

More next week here on Shot In The Dark.

Someone in Wisconsin – who describes herself as a “Passionate Dem, lover of justice fairness freedom animals bflies quilts words & nyc. RW asshats: be gone or be blocked. I don’t cast my pearls before swine” – cast forth the following pearl via the miracle of Twitter::

@moronwatch @mitchpberg thinks the unions and George Soros are “an oligarchy” while he supports RW’s destruction of our democracy. Moron!

I asked – she didn’t think Soros, AFSCME, the WEA and Big Labor are an “oligarchy?”

She replied:

 @mitchpberg George Soros’s efforts are to help the people and country. Real oligarchs like Kochs work strictly for themselves & u r thr tool

He’s like a Hungarian Robin Hood!

I’m pretty sure she blocked me.

The National Rifle Association has come out defending Michele Bachmann against Newsweek Magazine’s scabrous “Queen of Rage” cover piece on Michele Bachmann:

One of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s major political opponents is defending her against what it says is blatant sexism on the part of Newsweek magazine.

Wait – did I say National Rifle Association?

Ooop.  I meant…the National Organization of Women!

Monday, the National Organization for Women (NOW) spoke out against Newsweek’s most recent cover, which features an extreme close-up of Michele Bachmann and the title “The Queen of Rage.”

“It’s sexist,” NOW president Terry O’Neill told TheDC. “Casting her in that expression and then adding ‘The Queen of Rage’ I think [it is]. Gloria Steinem has a very simple test: If this were done to a man or would it ever be done to a man – has it ever been done to a man? Surely this has never been done to a man.”

The NOW, of course, is myopic; it happens to (conservative) men in the liberal media all the time.

Still – when even NOW notices that the liberal media observes a toxic double standard when covering women who happen to be conservatives, that should tell you something.

Of course, if you’re award-winning journalist ® Karl Bremer, what it tells you is that them uppity wimmins is gettin’ off the reservation agin:

Gender politics at its worst–NOW defends Michele Bachmann over Newsweek cover. Sad. http://t.co/ZG9YO8g #stribpol

Remember; it’s only offensive if it doesn’t benefit the left.

Chris Cilizza has released his annual list of “Best State-Based Political Blogs” for 2011.  It’s a list for all fifty states.  Cilizza hastens to note that…:

The best political blogs list is entirely driven by Fix readers and commenters. Many of the blogs below are partisan and may use language and/or images that neither The Fix nor the Washington Post condones. To be clear, we are not endorsing the view of the blogs on the list. Instead we intend to serve as a gateway for interested political junkies to pick and choose your favorites.

So here are the lists for…:

Minnesota

• Bluestem Prairie
• Capitol View
• Dump Bachmann
• Hot Dish Politics
• Minnesota Independent
• MinnPotus – that one took me a second: they meant “MinnPost”, apparently.  Whew.  I was afraid a blog about Bachmann and Pawlenty had snuck past me…
• Smart Politics
• True North – Well, all right!  Congrats to Derek, Nancy, AAA, Jonz, Nancy ,Cindy and Matt!

So True North got on the list, against the MPR, Strib and Humphrey Institute house blogs, a Soros joint, The Dump (hey, give ’em their due; they’ve always known how to get the media to pay disproportionate attention to them) and “Bluestem”, which gets points for being one of about three Minnesota leftyblogs that’s neither obviously clinically deranged, nor employed by the DFL/Soros/some “progressive” institution nor seemingly written by a press-release bot.

Hey, at least a conservative blog got on the list this year – in a state that’s spawned two of the most powerful blogs anywhere in the business, Powerline and Captain’s Quarters  (which got assimilated into Hot Air) and where the organic conservative blog scene True North digests every day is the biggest, most vibrant in the country.

Hm.  Makes sense now.

Anyway, congrats to all.

Question:  If you were storing a car in your garage for the winter, would you carry insurance on it?

If you’d discovered you didn’t read the Strib anymore, would you continue to pay for the subscription?

If you got an hour’s exercise a day by biking or running or swimming, would you pay for a gym membership?

No, no and probably not, I’m guessing.

Careful.  Award-winning journalist ® Karl Bremer might accuse you of driving without insurance, illiteracy and being out of shape…

…well, no.  That’s not quite right.  He’d write a piece on his blog Ripple in Stillwater with a headline like “Is Joe Schmo Driving Without Insurance?”, or “Is Mary Moe Illiterate?” or “Is Evonne Yeo Obese And Out Of Shape?”, listing the factoids and not a whole lot more.

One of the great plagues of the “alternative media” – and by that, I mean mostly the left-wing alternative media – is the “I’ll ask an inflammatory question – one with either no facts to back it up, or facts presented with no context that would help the uninformed that are my target audience decide whether it’s a valid quesiton – and let it dangle out there”.

It’s sort of like this classic South Park spoof of Glenn Beck…:

Which brings us to this piece from Bremer’s Ripple, in which he writes:

Throughout her political career, Michele Bachmann has rarely passed up an opportunity to burnish her lawyerly credentials by claiming that she’s a “tax litigation attorney.” And for almost as long, Bachmann hasn’t even been authorized to practice law in her home state of Minnesota.

Now, it appears that Bachmann’s license to practice law in Minnesota should not only be unauthorized, but suspended and placed on “not in good standing” status for failure to comply with the “Rules of the Supreme Court on Lawyer Registration.”…

…

This is only the latest in a long history of sloppy record-keeping, tardy legal filings and questionable campaign reports that litter Bachmann’s political career. Will anyone care enough to enforce the law this time?

You bet!

But since the allegations are coming from the award-winning journalist ® Karl Bremer, perhaps it’s not my place to check it out.  I’m no award winning journalist ® after all – I’m a mere uppity peasant.

So I wrote a couple of lawyer friends of mine; Joe Doakes of Como Park, and Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci (*).  And, for good measure, called the Minnesota Judicial Branch, which maintains the lists of lawyers that practice in Minnesota and, by the way, which Bremer cited.

And the answer I got?  To borrow a quote from Joe Pesci in the greatest movie ever made about the law in America, My Cousin Vinny, “Everything that guy just said is bullsh*t”.

Let’s break down Bremer’s charges, one by one:

“Suspended” Disbelief: Let’s go back to that last paragraph:

Now, it appears that Bachmann’s license to practice law in Minnesota should not only be unauthorized, but suspended and placed on “not in good standing” status for failure to comply with the “Rules of the Supreme Court on Lawyer Registration.”

Bremer writes this because Bachmann’s record with the Minnesota Judicial Branch reads “Not Authorized”.  Here, take a look.  It says she’s “Not Authorized Resident, Not Practicing in MN / Voluntarily Restricted (By Choice).

What does this mean?  I mean, to me – a mere uppity peasant – it appears that she may have taken her license out of “active” status to pursue another career for bit.   But what do I know?

Doakes – not an award-winning ® journalist, but a lawyer – explains:

Mr. Bremer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He reminds me of the guy who has read the “to coin money” phrase in the Constitution, interprets it to mean the only valid money is gold coinage, and therefore refuses to pay his mortgage. In similarly erroneous fashion, reading the plain English words in the Rules governing lawyer licenses doesn’t mean he understands how the Rules are applied in real life.

 First, Ms. Bachman’s license to practice law has NOT lapsed – she has voluntarily self-limited her license precisely as provided by the Rules. She could un-self-limit her license at any time as provided in the Rules (notify the Court, pay a fee, catch up on classes).

Sort of like letting the insurance lapse on a car you keep stored; it doesn’t preclude reinstating the insurance and going back on the road.

Unless you’re a conservative and you wander into Karl Bremer’s attention span.

Second, the Rules provide several different categories of lawyers – some actively practicing law and some not – for the excellent reason that some people may want to take a break from representing clients day-to-day in order to do something else (missionary work, for example, or perhaps public service) [Or serve in Congress – Ed.] but also want to be able to resume practicing law later, without having to retake the Bar Exam. This regulatory scheme is designed to let lawyers “park” their licenses for a time. It’s perfectly legal and commonly used.

Another friend of mine, also an attorney, raised some eyebrows when she let her Minnesota license go inactive.  It seemed odd – except her firm was giving her nothing but cases in Iowa and the Dakotas.  It only made sense to keep her active licenses there, but keep her MN license inactive until she really needed it.  Does it mean she’s “not following the rules”, as Bremer would claim?

Rep. Bachmann, with her LL.D in Tax Law from William and Mary, practices a fairly abstruse flavor of law.  Since she’s not currentlytrying cases, the license renewal is, at this moment in her life, an unneeded extra complication and expense – especially since it’s a relatively simple matter to get it back should she need it again.

My pseudonymous lawyers aren’t good enough for you?  Fair enough; I called the Minnesota Judicial Branch, and the Board of Continuing Legal Education.  They confirmed it. “Lots of attorneys go inactive when they are out of state, not practicing, or not in a position to do their Continuing Legal Education” due to, say, being in Congress, said a MJB employee who asked not to be named.

Paid Up: Bremer wrote:

Lawyers licensed to practice law in Minnesota are required to register annually with the Lawyer Registration Office in the Minnesota Judicial Branch. They’re also required to pay an annual registration fee that varies depending on the lawyer’s active/inactive status, income level, residence and years in the profession.

And – mirabile dictu  – she paid her fee!  Check out her MJB record; third line down?  “Last Payment:  7/11/11”.

Joe Tucci – a lawyer and member of the Minnesota Bar – notes:

I would add that the dues you are required to pay when you are on voluntary restricted status are about $100 less than on active status. If you have no prospect of representing clients in your jurisdiction because you are working in a different career out of state (which also hinders your ability to keep up on your CLEs), it just makes sense to to go on voluntary restricted status.

Hm.

States Of Existence:  Remember when Bremer insisted that there is something in Bachmann’s status that is deeply prejudicial?

Now, it appears that Bachmann’s license to practice law in Minnesota should not only be unauthorized, but suspended and placed on “not in good standing” status for failure to comply with the “Rules of the Supreme Court on Lawyer Registration.”

He even quoted the letter of the law…:

“A lawyer or judge who fails to meet all of the criteria to be on either active or inactive status is placed on non-compliant status, and the right to practice law in this state is automatically suspended,” the Supreme Court Rules state. “A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status is not in good standing. A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status must not practice law in this state, must not hold out himself or herself as authorized to practice law, or in any manner represent that he or she is qualified or authorized to practice law while on non-compliant status. Any lawyer or judge who violates this rule is subject to all the penalties and remedies provided by law for the unauthorized practice of law in the State of Minnesota.”

Wait a minute – where on the record does it say that Bachmann is in any sort of “non-compliant status?”  Check for yourself!

If you can’t find anything but the phrase “Not Authorized to Practice”, join the club.  Doakes notes that there is nothign to Bremer’s claim but, well, Bremer being Bremer:

Third, the phrase “Not Authorized to Practice” is not as ominous as it sounds. It has no negative connotation. The Rule is binary – you’re either Authorized or you’re Not Authorized.

And Doakes offers something Bremer didn’t – context:

For comparison purposes, here’s Michelle Bachman’s information.

And here’s the information for [another prominent local attorney].

And here’s the information about former Court of Appeals Judge Rollie Amundson, who was convicted of stealing from his clients and sent to prison.

You’ll notice all their licenses both are listed as Not Authorized but for different reasons: Ms. Bachmann’s because she’s chosen to stop representing clients while she serves in government, Mr. Shadduck’s because he’s dead, and Mr. Amundson’s because he hasn’t paid his annual fees. “Not Authorized” doesn’t mean “bad lawyer;” it simply means “not authorized.”

Because award-winning journalists ® don’tneed to give complete, accurate context, I guess:

Where? Finally, Bremer attacked Bachmann’s attention to paperwork in re reporting her address:

The Supreme Court Rules also require that “Every lawyer or judge must immediately notify the Lawyer Registration Office of any change of postal address. Every lawyer or judge who elects to use the online registration system must immediately update their online registration profile to reflect any change of their postal address and email address.”

That rule is clearly referenced on the Minnesota Judicial Branch website on Updating Lawyer Registration.

Bachmann paid her most recent annual registration fee on July 11, 2011. Her address listed on her registration is 1801 Johnson Drive, Stillwater, MN. But Bachmann hasn’t lived at that address for nearly four years.

That would appear to put Bachmann in noncompliance with the Supreme Court Rules—not just this year, but for at least the past three years.

“A lawyer or judge who fails to meet all of the criteria to be on either active or inactive status is placed on non-compliant status, and the right to practice law in this state is automatically suspended,” the Supreme Court Rules state. “A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status is not in good standing. A lawyer or judge on non-compliant status must not practice law in this state, must not hold out himself or herself as authorized to practice law, or in any manner represent that he or she is qualified or authorized to practice law while on non-compliant status. Any lawyer or judge who violates this rule is subject to all the penalties and remedies provided by law for the unauthorized practice of law in the State of Minnesota.”

 

Doakes, however, notes that Bremer is just making stuff up now:

Fourth, I know the plain English words in the Rule say you must update even an Inactive registration but nobody updates an Inactive registration while it’s still Inactive; you update your registration when it goes Active again, when you want to resume practice. Take another look at Mr. Shadduck and Mr. Amundson’s addresses – they use their last address from the time they last were in Active practice. That’s the common and widely accepted practice and Ms. Bachmann is following it.

And if that were not the case? Well, Bremer’s gonna be one busy little award-winning ® wannabe muckracker:

Finally, to address the major point of Mr. Bremer’s column, the phrase “postal address” in the Rule does not require you to list your HOME mailing address, the place where you eat and sleep, but only to list SOME mailing address at which the Court can send notices to you. In this age of wackos with instant Internet access to public records [heh heh – Ed.], NOBODY gives the home address where they actually spend their days and nights, on their registration.

[Ramsey County Judge] Robert Awsumb doesn’t list his home address.

Nor does the leading personal injury lawyer in the state and founder of Schwebel, Goetz and Sieben.

Nor even ordinary government bureaucrats, such as the Attorney General, Lori Swanson.

And see United States Senator Amy Klobuchar, another Minnesota lawyer now serving in Congress.

Swanson and Klobuchar? Scofflaws?

Er, Karl Bremer?  You’ve got some wrongdoing to expose!  Our Attorney General and Senior Senator should both be chastised, shunned, and disbarred, by the logic in your own story!

You get right on that!

Doakes concludes:

Not Authorized to Practice – Voluntarily Restricted – and showing an address where she doesn’t actually eat and sleep on a daily basis (Senator Klobuchar lives somewhere closer to her job in Washington, DC, obviously, and simply maintains this condo in Minnesota for residency purposes). Nothing wrong with that – perfectly common practice for lawyers in government service. Such as Ms. Bachmann.

Mr. Bremer may have read the Rules governing lawyer registration, but he doesn’t understand them. Oh, and he still has to pay his mortgage, too.

The moral of the story?  If it’s the Twin Cities award-winning ® leftymedia, and they’re writing about conservatives?  Distrust, then verify.

Then, almost inevitably, distrust some more.

(And the very nice lady from the Minnesota Judicial Branch?  She confirmed everything Doakes and Tucci said).

UPDATE:  Another rep from the Continuing Legal Education office called back.  “Someone who voluntarily suspends their license but keeps their fees paid up is in good standing”.

As opposed to, y’know, bad standing.

(more…)

It’s no secret – American trade unions have been hemorrhaging membership for decades.  Outside government, there really is very little future for unions; in the private sector, they are a cost that generally can not be sustained.

And so when the unions can find a hidden trove of tens of thousands of workers that can be unionized in one fell swoop, it’s like candy at Christmas.

The proposed merger between ATT and TMobile will release just such a stockpile of fresh potential dues-paying recruits.  ATT is unionized; TMobile is not, but being the absorbed entity, its employees – 20,000 of them – would be potential union recruits.

That’s a lot of money.

And the unions knew it.  And so the unions – almost all the big ones – aggressively lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve the merger.  The record is long and ornate; the unions really, really wanted this deal.

Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO., sounded off when the news of the proposed merger broke:  “Yesterday’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T hasimportant, positive implications for consumers in the U.S. and Germany, forthe U.S. telecom workforce and for our country’s economic future. The acquisition ensures AT&T a strong telecom workforce well-positioned tocompete globally, while offering tens of thousands of T-Mobile USA employees the opportunity to make their jobs good jobs by benefitting from the pro-worker policies of AT&T, one of the only unionized U.S. wireless companies”

The AFL-CIO’s house blog was similarly effusive: ““The announcement over the weekend that AT&T is buying T-Mobile USA could benefit both consumers and employees”

And Larry Cohen, President, Communications Workers of America. also spoke up: “For more than a decade, the United States has continued to drop behind nearly every other developed economy on broadband speed and build out. The Federal Communications Commission sounded the alarm more than a year ago with its broadband report, and President Obama in his State of th eUnion address called for increased efforts to bring the U.S. back to global parity as a key stimulus for economic development. Today’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T is  avictory for broadband proponents in both the U.S. and Germany. For the U.S.,it means that T-Mobile customers will get quick access to the AT&T network,soon to include LTE or data speeds of at least 10 megabits down stream.More important, as part of the deal, AT&T is committing to build out to nearly every part of the U.S. within six years”    Bear in mind that Cohen and the CWA are not cheerleaders for big telecoms; they’ve fought a long, losing battle with Sprint over their practice of contracting out labor, rather than hiring expensive union employees and taking on their pension burden.

Last month, Philip Qualy, legislative director of the Minnesota United Transportation Union’s mailed the FCC’s Julius Genachowski to support the merger; you can read the letter here.  Ditto Shar Knutson and Steve Hunter, from the MN AFL-CIO.  And Julie Schnell, President of the SEIU’s Minnesota State Council; while the SEIU is reliably in bed with the Democrats and the DFL, they know money when they see it.

And Edward Reynoso, political director of the Teamsters’ “Democratic Republican Independent Voter Education” (DRIVE) project, who estimated the long-term upside for the unions, and the private economy, at up to 96,000 jobs.  Not to mention Mona Meyer, president of the Minnesota Communications Workers of America, the union that’d be most affected by the merger.

There is no doubt that labor has close ties with Democrats in Congress.  A list of eighty members of the House of Representatives – including Betty McCollum, of Minnesota’s Fourth Congressional District, signed a letter to the FCC also supporting the merger.

So it’s a big deal for the unions.

And as such, it should be a big deal for Democrat – right?

———-

Last Wednesday, Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl recommended that the FCC spike the almost-$40-billion deal:

”I have concluded that this acquisition, if permitted to proceed, would likely cause substantial harm to competition and consumers, would be contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest, and therefore should be blocked by your agencies,” Kohl said [last] Wednesday.

The unions seemed flabbergasted.  Candice Johnson, communications director for the Communications Workers of America, wrote to tell the FCC that no, they were not amused:

CWA Response to Kohl Letter 7 20

So what does this mean for Al Franken, for  you private sector union people out there,and for the country?

More tomorrow.

For starters, there’s only one thing in the media lower-rent than posting titillating headlines to draw search engine traffic.

And that is anything said, thought or done by Cenk Uyghur.

Uyghur who just got whacked at MSNBC after a not-especially-auspicious year or so – claimed that he was diced because he was just too tough on politicians, and that his Youtube channel is bigger than Jebus.

Which drew the attention of Breitbart, who is to bloaty-headed lefty wannabe thugs what garlic is to bloaty-headed wanna be thug vampires::

Nothing lower than exploiting public prurience for ratings and search engine traffic.

And in closing, may I just add “Scarlett Johannson Sex Tape”.

That is all.

Matt McNeill – a “host” of sorts at failed local liberal-talk station AM950, on Twitter Sunday morning:

Disturbing the righto’s/tea baggers who condemn the Norway shooting in 1 breath, then share the shooters frustration at liberals in the next

For some reason – no coffee yet? – I responded:

It’s official: @MattMcNeilAM950 thinks questioning American liberalsm = sympathy w/Breivik. This is the liberal media. #stribpol #narn

Which prompted McNeill’s to respond:

It’s official, #mitchpberg understands and sympathizes with the Norway shooter. To Mitchy, killing 100 people is just a 1st Amendment issue.

This is the “mind” of the Twin Cities leftymedia in action.

It’d be tempting to call for some sort of response – but it occurs to me that “working” on AM950 is punishment enough, in almost a Biblical sense, for that kind of bigotry.

What was Keith Olberman doing all those months?

Yesterday, I noted that Kenneth Gladney’s attackers had been acquitted, in a trial in which his SEIU attackers were represented by expensive, big-bucks defense attorneys while the District Attorney’s office in the Democrat-dominated county – mirabile dictu – had assigned a greenhorn prosecutor trying his first jury case.

For those who weren’t paying attention three years ago, here was the  video.

In his Outstage Politics blog, Eric Austin responded with a piece called “The BLEATING Continues“.  You see, I called the original piece “The Beating Continues”, and capitol letters hypes the irony.  You only get this from watching Jon Stewart, I guess.

Anyway – in the mind of the left, the fact that Gladney’s attackers were acquitted means there was never an attack, no way, no how.

You saw the video, right?

Just in case you missed it above…:

What this means is that there is a level of violence that Eric Austin thinks is perfectly acceptable.  I suspect this means that if someone pushes and kicks Austin and knocks him down and puts him in the hospital for a night and calls him derogatory terms – “teacher”, maybe – he’s just going to laugh about it.  (No, I’m not going to warn people not to do it, because smart people know I’m making a point and not calling for violence, and the dumb people who attack people over politics are, with painfully few exceptions, on the left, which is bad news for society, but good news for Austin).

It’s not just Austin, of course; I’ve heard other leftybloggers, even some that aren’t utterly depraved, call it a “pratfall”. That many of them were the ones screeching about “climates of violence” during the Tea Parties, or after the Giffords shooting, is upsetting but also a bit of a tu quoque ad hominem, an inconsistency rather than a refutation.

But it does seem like a double standard; if a Democrat feels threatened, even if the threat is the exact sort of thing elected officials of both parties get all the time, the Republic is in danger; if union goons knock a guy down and put him in the hospital in a hail of racial epithets, it’s a “pratfall”.

No, no – of course the left doesn’t find violence acceptable.  Good heavens, no, and not racism either. Don’t you dare question their demonstrable commitment to non-violence!

Just ask Mr. Gladney.

The Minnesota “Independent” feels the need to remind its audience that Bachman’s Floral and Koch Refineries are not related to the political figures with similar names.

Probably a good idea.

Someday, when “Drinking Liberally” becomes more of a food thing and less of a booze gig, I think I’ve got their venue:

.

Broadway at Bass Lake in Crystal.

Just saying.

I’m one of the few Twin Cities conservative bloggers who bothers, occasionally, to try to stomach reading Twin Cities leftyblogs.

The battle of the blogs has been a rollercoaster for the past decade.  From 2002 through 2005, it was no context; conservative blogs owned the field.  After 2004, liberals with deep pockets – most famously but not only George Soros –  began pumping huge money into building an instant alt-media infrastructure (including, locally, the deliciously-ironically-named Minnesota Independent) designed mainly to pass chanting points down a virtual “chain of command” from the Soros-funded “Media Matters For America”, either explicitly or via the monkey-see, monkey-do mob social dynamic of the left.

But as Erik Telford notes, it’s just not working:

I’d told you three years ago that conservatives would be leading the left in the realm of online politics, I would have been laughed out of the room. Now we’re dominating so thoroughly that the left is running scared — literally.

One of the key drivers of the left’s online dominance used to be the Netroots Nation Convention, an annual gathering of several thousand left-wing bloggers. Started in 2006, the convention provides attendees with networking opportunities and trains them to more effectively organize and mobilize “progressives” through the Internet.

Telford is, of course, one of the organizers of “Right Online”, which since 2008 has been accompanying Netroots around the country.  And this year, the contrast couldn’t have been more stark.  More in a bit.

This year, The New York Times declared the conservative side victorious, saying: “judging by the fervor for one’s favorites and animosity toward the opposition, the passion of bloggers seemed to have swung toward conservatives.” The Washington Post noted “the only chants of ‘Yes We Can’ seemed to be at RightOnline.”

Let’s go back to that “animosity” bit for a moment.  Conservatives are used to having to react civilly to dissent; most (by no means all, but a crushing majority) of conservatives are fine with, or at least accept, the fact that we share a society with people with differing opinions.

But here’s your leftymedia in action, at Netroots:

VIDEO

Clearly, the tables have turned in a dramatic way…In fact, the president has found himself embattled in the new media sphere — with attacks from both his left and his right. Call it reverse triangulation.

Just a few weeks ago, the White House acknowledged its shift from an offensive to a defensive posture with the addition of Jesse Lee — who, as the “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response,” is charged with the unenviable task of defending the president from critical bloggers and online activists from both sides of the ideological spectrum.

At the same time, Tea Party groups are using technology to organize and mobilize in unprecedented ways. Republican members of Congress are better than their Democratic counterparts at using Facebook and Twitter to inform and motivate their constituents.

The roller coaster can certainly turn again; Soros has a lot of money.  Perhaps he’ll invent a computer program that can generate content more efficiently than this current army of flacks.

But for now?  All good.

When you get any group of insular, echo-chamber-dwelling, chanting-points-motivated people who communicate with each other and almost nobody else, it’s a virtually inevitable trait of human nature that they will develop a worldview that centers on…well, them.   It doesn’t matter if it’s Packers fans, Manhattanites, Kansas sorghum farmers, Ivy Leaguers, bowlers, avant-guard music fans, square dancers…

But our Twin Cities’ “progressive” “alternative”  media are especially funny.

Eric “Big E” Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project wrote about the Strib’s coverage of last weekend’s “Netroots Nation”.  Or, he complains, lack of coverage:

I was at Netroots Nation so I wasn’t paying attention to my newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Apparently, the Strib didn’t even send a reporter to Netroots. This time someone else noticed that their coverage of politics is not very thorough:

Pusey links to a piece at Crooks and Liars, a rhetorical dutch oven echoblog.  Astute observers of the regional media scene will get a chuckle:

Now, I expect that local readers will tell me that the Minneapolis paper is a long-established right-wing Republican rag, and gauging from their Sunday editorial-page lineup, that certainly is the impression I came away with.

[Facepalm – Ed.]

And no doubt it is despised by the PowerLines of the world for not being right-wing enough, which then becomes their excuse — “See? Both sides hate us! Therefore, we must be exactly right in the middle!”

This is what passes for logic on their side.

So to be honest, I wasn’t really surprised to see that the Star-Tribune, as I perused it over my coffee and hashbrowns this morning, had actually completely ignored the presence of Netroots Nation in their city and carried not a single word about events there. And indeed, if you check their archives, they couldn’t even be bothered to send a single reporter over to the convention center this week to write about the many luminaries there. Instead, their coverage consisted entirely pieces filed by Associated Press reporters. Oh, wait — there was one piece by a columnist that talked about Netroots and its deeper meaning without any indication he’d ever set foot in the convention.

That’s just embarrassing.

Yes, but not in the way that the writer intended.

Pusey picks up the narrative:

But it’s even worse than that. They spent the weekend lavishing column inches upon the much smaller, conservative Right Online convention which shadows Netroots wherever it goes:

And why might that be?

Netroots Nation – the annual gathering of the lefty echo chamber in some hapless city – was a massive clot of angry leftybloggers and media types, angrily declaiming their anger.

It was nothing but an anger convention.  There was nothing of any news interest there, beyond the lefty “alt”-media’s apparent need to feel noticed.

In news terms, it’s not even dog bites dog.  It’s dog licks dog.

And RightOnline – a smaller event, as Pusey correctly notes – normally isn’t even that much.

Except for the three serious presidential candidates who spoke.

And the omnipresence of Andrew Breitbart, who broke not only the biggest political story of the past few months – Weinergate – and endured weeks of agenda-based hazing from the establishment media and lefty “alternative” crowd (before being proven 100% correct in every way), and James O’Keefe, who has also launched some newsworthy bombshells [and endured months of agenda-driven hazing from the establishment and lefty “alt” medias (before being proven 100% correct in every way ] was a bit newsworthy too.

Now, it’s not entirely true that there was no news at Netroots.  Breitbart’s hysterically hysterical reception by the Sorosphere’s dingos when he sauntered into the Convention, and the frothing anger at Obama provided the only real “news” at Netroots.

But Breitbart’s promenade was unplanned (or at least the dead-tree media weren’t cc’ed on it), and the anger at Obama – well, it undercuts Pusey’s and “Crooks’…” spin, doesn’t it?  If the Strib were a GOP-leaning rag, they’d be happy to show Obama eroding among the True Believers, woudn’t they?

I thought about ending the post there – but the C’nL “writer” lurched from solipsism into delusion next:

But then I nearly blorted my coffee out onto the rag when I came across Bob Von Sternberg’s loving coverage of the Republican luminaries at the Right Online conference, complete with big pictures of Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, which meant that they not only sent a reporter, there was a Star-Trib photographer there as well. (Von Sternberg wrote a second piece, for online readers, about Right Online as well.

Bob Von Sternberg? This Bob Von Sternberg?  “Loving” conservatives?

In the special little world of the lefty “alt” media, apparently covering the news, to say nothing of the odd fitful attempt at balance, is bias.

Andrew Breitbart caught in avalanche of douchebag effluvia:

And I’d be amazed if a majority of leftybloggers don’t consider this “reporting”.

To think I coulda spent a couple days covering these yapping little juveniles. (Assuming they would give press credentials to an unbeliever).

When I saw the headline on the Minnesota Birkeydependent – “Backers of gay marriage ban seek to prevent disclosure about campaign spending, donors” is how it reads – my spidey-sense just knew it would be in there.

What, you ask?

That little thing that’s there whenever any talk of campaign finance disclosure – by Republicans – comes up.

Stay with me, here.  Birkey writes:

The groups behind a ballot measure that would put a ban on same-sex marriage in the Minnesota Constitution urged the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board on Tuesday to retain a rule that would allow corporations to make unlimited contributions in support of the ballot measure. The Minnesota Family Council (MFC) testified that it shouldn’t have to disclose any of its donors in the campaign to pass the amendment, while Minnesota for Marriage, of which MFC and the National Organization for Marriage are a part, brought in attorneys from the Citizens United Supreme Court case to argue that political spending by corporations on the amendment push should be shielded from disclosure laws.

Now as you know, I favor scrapping all restrictions on domestic campaign contributions – but requiring all campaigns and parties to immediately, as in “within one hour of receiving the donation, and before cashing the checks”, disclosing all donations on the internet, and keeping those donations available for years.

But that’s not really the point of this post.

No, it’s this.  Indeed, I skipped over most of Birkey’s piece, until I found what I knew I’d find, immediately, upon reading the headline:

But the majority of the testifiers supported the board in changing its opinion on corporate disclosure.

Mike Dean of Common Cause Minnesota said, “Minnesota has a long history of supporting disclosure.”

He said it helps the board gather and detect violations and cited a complaint his group filed against the National Organization for Marriage and the Minnesota Family Council over ads the groups ran in 2010 that they did not report.

“Having this knowledge allows the public to make informed decisions,” he said. “The public has a right to know who is making this political speech. Without the knowledge about who is making political speech, the public can’t evaluate the information or misinformation.”

Fascinating assertion, coming from Mike Dean…

…who leads “Common Cause of Minnesota”, which agitates for transparancy (on the part of non-“progressive” organizations)…

…and whose organization shows $600,000 donations last year, every penny of them anonymous.

“Progressives” – or at least, way too many of them – hate the free and open interchange of ideas.

Over on this thread at MinnPost on the cancellation of “Sons of Liberty” on AM1280, a commenter sniffed “Freedom of speech has been stretched to the limit by “Patriot” radio”.  And I’d love to ask – what are the “limits” of free speech?   (And, by the way – for all of you who got the vapors over Brad Dean’s radio show or prayer in the house – are you OK with lefty host Randi Rhodes repeatedly calling for then-President Bush’s murder?  Or with Ed Schultz calling his talk-radio better Laura Ingraham a “slut”?  Just curious).

To many progressives, apparently, the limit is “whatever challenges what I believe“; students at Georgetown turned out to sign a (staged) petition to censor conservative websites:

“The undersigned hereby adamantly demand that the United States government shut down right wing hate sites. The hate speech propagated by sites like the Drudge Report, Hot Air, Instapundit, Big Government, and others must not be allowed to corrupt our political discourse any longer. These sites are dangerous not only to truth and freedom but also to our society as a whole. BAN THEM NOW!”

This is at Georgetown, mind you – incubator for our nation’s putative future elites.  And it’s not pretty; it might be time to look into getting some new “elites”.

Ed Morrissey – whose site was specifically targeted in the petition – quotes some of the new power generation:

“There has to be some control,” one young woman says. “I mean, freedom of speech is good, but, there is a certain modicum of control — I mean, look at the Tea Party.” Yeah, look at that freedom of assembly and freedom of political speech that garnered so much support that Republicans won more new seats in a midterm election than either party had in 72 years. We have to control that kind of thing! I particularly liked the one woman who signed the petition because sites like ours “cause a lot of debate.” Oh, heavens, no! Not debate! Why, then one might have to actually pay attention and think for one’s self!

Most common reaction to the question, “What do you think of the First Amendment?” was “I think it’s great, but ….” Maybe Georgetown should consider remedial Civics and American History classes.

I’d say Georgetown, and much of the public education bureaucracy, is thinking “Mission Accomplished” right about now.

It’s nothing new, of course.  Back in 1986, on my old graveyard-shift show on KSTP, I interviewed some members of “Women Against Military Madness” after their leader, Polly Mann, called for censorship of media that didn’t promote the “peace at any price” line.  With a straight face.

(SCENE:  Liam Branbert and his wife Slainte, midly disheveled, under the covers, smoking cigarettes).

LIAM: “So did the earth move for you?”

SLAINTE: “Sure, a little”.

LIAM: “But did it move in a progressive way, or kind of a conservative way?”

SLAINTE: “Um – I dunno?  Why?”

LIAM: IT’S IMPORTANT, DAMMIT!”

(And scene).

——————–

Absurd?

Well, on the left, nothing is too absurd.

Which brings us to Brian Lambert’s little poison-pen blog post about Scott Johnson’s observance of Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday.

Other than the melodies, I always wonder how conservative ideologues (ir)rationalize the work of people like Bob Dylan? (Likewise, T-Paw claiming to be a big Springsteen fan.)

Serious?

For starters, because a great piece of art – I’m talking everything from Bach to Darkness on the Edge of Town – connects with people on a way that is much, much deeper than politics.  Although with some on the left, maybe nothing goes deeper than politics.

But I digress.   Scott, my friend and former NARN co-host, is as articulate a music critic as there is:

“In his outstanding City Journal essay on Pete Seeger (“America’s most successful Communist”), Howard Husock placed Dylan in the line of folk agitprop in which Seeger took pride of place. Husock’s essay is an important and entertaining piece. Dylan is only a small part of the story Husock has to tell, however, and Husock therefore does not pause long enough over Dylan to observe how quickly Dylan burst the shackles of agitprop, found his voice, and tapped into his own vein of the Cosmic American Music. Looking back on his long career, one can discern his respect for the tradition as well as his ambition to stand at its head. On 1964’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ album, Dylan foreshadowed his break from the folk movement in ‘Restless Farewell,’ the album’s closing song.”

Lambert – for whom Randy Rhodes (the host, not the guitarist) may be the most evocative artist:

By his next birthday I’m guessing Johnson will have transformed Bob into the poet laureate of The Heritage Foundation.

Or – here’s a radical notion, albeit not a Radical one – he’ll enjoy it.

If you follow the “logic” behind Andy Birkey’s piece (and like all lefty memes, it came from Birkey’s superiors; Phyllis Kahn was mumbling the same sort of tripe a few weeks ago), that…:

If you have even been divorced – in other words, if some part of your life or paper trail is inconsistent with the position, Then you have no business debating what “marriage” is…

…then consistency more or less demands you apply that same logic throughout.

Don’t look at me.  It’s Phyllis Kahn and Andy Birkey’s idea.

As I’ve pointed out on this blog in the past, I’m a former liberal.  But for the grace of God and Doctor Blake, I could still be one today.

But I also had a thing for getting the story right, even when I was a liberal. So I could see how, in an alternate world where common sense never intervened, I might be working as an editor for Twin Cities Ministry Of Independent Media (MiniIndiMed), the centralized editorial control center for all Twin Cities “alternative” media (I did say it was an alternate world, right?) where I”d be collecting a Soros paycheck (alternate worlds by their nature share some traits with our world) to take my red editorial pencil to the output of the Twin Cities’ “alternative” media community.

With that in mind, I thought I’d take a swerve through a “What If”; if I had stayed liberal, and gotten that job with MiniIndiMed.   Here might be my series of revisions – a “red pen”, which will be represented here with red type – to  this Jeff Rosenberg piece on MnPublius:

I’ve been appalled by the MNGOP’s absolute refusal to compromise. They have insisted that they either get every single thing they want or they will shut down our government. It’s an outrage.   [Jeff – I know “victorian vapours” is your gig, but they are doing what they were sent to office,with a resounding mandate, to do.  Feigned outrage looks a little comical after a while – Ed.]

I’m even more outraged, though, when I think of exactly what it is they’re fighting for. I said they insist on getting everything they want. But exactly is that? Here are a few of their top priorities:

Over 100,000 Minnesotans thrown off health care  [Jeff, your link provides no source for this claim.  And when the undecided reader (you have some of those, right?) learns that what the GOP is really doing is transitioning able-bodied, single people off of benefits, and means-testing more, it might tend to undercut your narrative.  Please check into this – Ed.]

Massive cuts to higher education  [More of the same here, Jeff; the “cuts” can be entirely made up by rolling administrative costs back to levels of a couple years ago; and just between and me, you know how much professorial deadwood there is a the U. Please check – Ed.]

A $1.4 billion property tax increase [Jeff, I keep telling you this; eventually, a Republican blogger is going to ask you to show us the bill where the property taxes were increased.  You know it’s absurd, of course – city councils and county commissions do that! – Ed.]

30,000 lost jobs [Jeff, you’re giving me a headache now.  This a number, very likely a random one – something someone at the DFL down on Plato pulled out of their ass to use as a chanting point.  Go ahead and use the number – but know that if you do, people will think MNPublius is some sort of DFL press-release site or something.  You wouldn’t want that, would you?  Of course not! – Ed.]

It’s bad enough that the Republicans are so arrogant they don’t believe they need to compromise. But look at their agenda — look what they’re fighting for. These are absolute disasters for our state. Responsible policymakers would be working hard to protect us from the worst of these cuts. The Republicans, though, are actually fighting for them. [This, on the other hand, is good stuff.  The victorian vapors play well with our base – Ed.]

Governor Dayton is trying to protect Minnesotans from the worst consequences of our budget deficit, while still making needed cuts. The Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to make sure the pain is as bad as possible. [It’s a good thing we don’t pay you to substantiate claims!  Whew! – Ed.]

Every day, in every way, I thank God I took the path I took.

Although that Soros check would be nice.

Where are those Koch Brothers, anyway/

Robert Espinosa – who, to the best of my knowledge, has never said or done anything that didn’t start with a false pretense – is the voice of today’s DFL.

Go for it, DFL.  Embrace your inner, disingenous, narcissistic, solopsistic, childish id. You’re not fooling anyone.

Andy Post at MDE  points us to a tweet yesterday from a DFL staffer for St. Paul DFL Senator Dick Cohen:

Dumb remark by the overly-entitled child of boundless political privilege?  In and of itself, sure.  And, as such, more or less forgettable.

Post, however, wonders if the DFLers will show the same outrage as they did when a GOP Senator’s assistant sent an imprudent – dumb, really – email over the winter.  Kim Kelley, a legislative assistant to Senator Scott Newman, told the Minnesota Nurse’s Association that the Senator would not meet with their rep, since the Nurse’s Association had donated to Newman’s opponent’s campaign.

He linked to “Sally Jo Sorenson” of Bluestem Prairie.  Sorenson, always on the lookout for affronts to DFL integrity, amended a post she wrote last January in which she wrote about the flap in January:

Here’s the intact email, since the Kelley email no longer works:

From: kim.kelley@senate.mn [mailto:kim.kelley@senate.mn]
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2011 2:00 PM
To: Eileen Gavin
Subject: [Eileen Gavin] Meeting

Hi Eileen-

Unfortunately, Senator Newman will not see any organizations that donated to/supported his opponent Hal Kimball. After some careful checking, I discovered that the MNA had donated to Kimball’s campaign. Your association will be unable to schedule an appointment with Senator Newman.

Kim Kelley

Legislative Assistant

Sorenson rejects the idea that there’s any moral equivalence between a bobbleheaded LA’s caustic, sneering contempt for Christians, and another bobblehead bringing a hint of retributive spite into getting access to a Senator.

And guess what – she’s right!

They are two separate, equally noxious issues.

Kelley let slip the worst-kept secret in politics; donations buy you access, and pissing off politicians loses it.  The Minnesota Nurses Association is no more welcome with Scott Newman than the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance is with, say, Tom Bakk.  Oh, it’s good politics to meet with, and especially to be seen meeting with, ones’ opponents (and Sorensen does note that Newman did actually meet with the MNA after all), but let’s not kid ourselves; there’s a reason special interests pony up for campaigns.  (And the more politicians try to “reform” it, rather than illuminate it, the worse it gets).

Don’t kid yourself; if a young evangelical Republican tweeted a dumb jape about Eid, or Passover, or…well, any non-Christian observance, really, the long knives would certainly come out.  But Kaplan?  Well, she’s what you get from young “progressives” who’ve come up through an academic and political system that teaches smug, giggly, entitled intolerance.  And stop the presses – a  Jewish (presumably – I mean, it’s not a stretch to think Kaplan is at least ethnically Jewish, but given my family name, I’m not insensitive to the possibility it’s not) 20-something hipster is bagging on Christians.

It’s pretty piddly, really.  But so is most petty intolerance.

Thesis:  When leftybloggers can’t manage a logical argument or, often as not, when the DFL’s press releases haven’t told them how to respond in any other way, then it’s off to the name-calling.

They’re not even especially creative about it.  Have you noticed how many conservatives are “Whiners!”, are “Having a Meltdown!” or are “Freaking Out!”, or “Having a Cow”, in the leftybloggers’ odd little language?

When I saw that “Phoenix Woman” from Mercury Rising had written snivelled like a “Real Housewife of Orange County” who’d gotten a Cadillac instead of a Bentley that “Republicans Are Whiners“, referring to my post the other day that noted that Tea Party turnout last Saturday was low, likely, because it was 33 degrees at noon with a howling north wind, I did what I do whenever “Phoenix” writes something; checked Cucking Stool.  Because there seems to be an incredible degree of synchronicity between the two blogs’ efforts.  Simply incredible.

Sure enough, Kackel Dackel “Spotty” at The Stool had – mirabile dictu – nearly the same premise.  He wrote sniveled like a  prison shower-room boytoy that’d just been passed around a bunch of Aryan Brothers:

With all the whining and bleating bla bla bla teabagger teabagger teabagger bla bla lawn-chair patriots yadda yadda…

The leftyblogs and the media – pardon the redundancy – are taking off their clothes and smearing themselves with excrement and falling into catatonic states because they’ve been told that the movement that destroyed them at the polls five months ago, and that all  the GOP candidates are courting, and that has Amy “Ms. Safe Seat” Klobuchar and Barack “The One” Obama making all sorts of fiscally-responsble, spending-hawk-y noises, has somehow “died”.

Now, “Spotty” pointed out shrieked his larynx into hamburger while bashing his head against the sidewalk that while “only” 150-200 conservatives braved the “cold” to come to the Saint Paul protest, and 300 people turned out to see Michele Bachmann in gorgeous weather in South Carolina, the union protesters in Wisconsin turned out in huge numbers on some mighty cold days in Wisconsin.

He probably didn’t realize it, but he pretty much proved my point.

If you believe in stereotypes – and let’s consider the targets of this post, hey?  – then you accept that conservatives are not “demonstrators”.  We just don’t naturally gravitate toward group protests.  So when 600,000 turned out on Tax Day right after the Obamascenscion, and millions last year after the passing of Obamacare, it was big news; conservatives motivated to come out by an immediate crisis.

Sort of like Wisconsin‘s Madison and Milwaukee’s protesters.   People react to immediate events.

So you can assume, against all actual political evidence, that the movement is collapsing.  Or you can remember that in Saint Paul and South Carolina and across the nation conservatives – the Tea Party – had just won crushing victories, flipping both houses and leaving Mark Dayton impotent and adrift in Saint Paul and likely setting the stage for bigger victories after redistricting, and taking the trifecta in South Carolina.  The crisis isn’t over, not by a long shot, but we blunted it.  And so as of last Saturday, there was just no immediate crisis at hand, and people did other things with their Saturday.   Does it mean they won’t turn up at the polls next year?

You could remember, if you can accept a little more “whining”, that some of the same people were doing their end-zone happy dances about this time last year; the Tea Party rally in Saint Paul was about 1/3 the size of the 2009 rally.

And we know how that turned out, right?

(No, it’s a serious question.  For all I know, they think last November was just a bunch of whining too…)