Yet another “study” made the rounds a few weeks ago claiming that Fox News viewers are less well-informed than the average news consumer.

These things have been going around and around – and getting debunked – for so long, it’s hard to even pay attention anymore.   There will, inevitably, be a savage debunking.  It never fails.

And so there is; the “study”, accepted as gospel by everyone from your slack-jawed corner leftyblogger to the HuffPo to the NYTimes (pardon the redundancy) isn’t worth the electrons it was printed on.  The study:

• Didn’t test what it claimed,
• The data collected supported opposite conclusions than what was claimed,
• The “study” contained a trick question
• It contained baseless conclusions.
• It presented highly disputed conclusions as fact – and, in the bargain, it presented policy points from left-of-center groups as the “Truth”, differing from which meant that one was “misinformed”.

In short, the “study” was no more valid than, say, a Humphrey Institute poll.  Oh, yeah – and it’s funded by George Soros.

The whole debunk is on video here.

Watch it, and remember – if more than one liberal group claims something to be a fact, 99% of the time it is a lie.

Remember last spring?

When leftybloggers and the local and national media were scouring behind every dandelion for “racist tea partiers?   When the standard of “proof” was “suspicious ambiguity?”

As most of us who actually attended Tea Party rallies knew, it was all crap.

And now we have proof:

A new analysis of political signs displayed at a tea party rally in Washington last month reveals that the vast majority of activists expressed narrow concerns about the government’s economic and spending policies and steered clear of the racially charged anti-Obama messages that have helped define some media coverage of such events.

And there’s your thesis – the media has used whatever “racist” signs they did find to paint their entire coverage of the conservative revolution.   The gullible and/or depraved lefty “alternative” media has run with that meme, naturally.

Ekins’s conclusion is not that the racially charged messages are unimportant but that media coverage of tea party rallies over the past year have focused so heavily on the more controversial signs that it has contributed to the perception that such content dominates the tea party movement more than it actually does.

“Really this is an issue of salience,” Ekins said. “Just because a couple of percentage points of signs have those messages doesn’t mean the other people don’t share those views, but it doesn’t mean they do, either. But when 25 percent of the coverage is devoted to those signs, it suggests that this is the issue that 25 percent of people think is so important that they’re going to put it on a sign, when it’s actually only a couple of people.”

Conservatives can expect the media to slander us.  But it’s good to fight it.

I’d almost forgotten about this: Mark Dayton is a hero to the 9/11 Truther community.

In 2005, from the well of the Senate, Mark Dayton claimed that NORAD and the FAA were hiding something big about the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

And the 9/11 Truther movement was a big, happy audience for him:

This excerpt deals with the death threat against Senator Mark Dayton (D) Minn – when he aggressively challenged the Pentagon and FAA lies to Congress.

Mark Dayton: Chicken Little?  No – Former Senator Chicken LIttle.

Count the references to the crowd at the Beck/Palin rally being “overwhelmingly white“.  Why, it’s almost as if there’s a back-channel discussion group for the liberal/mainstream media to coordinate chanting points and narrative peaks or something.

Although slipups happen.  Heads will no doubt roll.

How desperate was the leftymedia to find some evidence – any evidence at all – of “racism” in the crowd?  NPR’s correspondent had to go back to the Obamacare rallies last March, and refer to Rep. Lewis’ charges of racism (albeit she didn’t bother to mention that these accusations have been debunked).

I think it was Mark Twain that said “a lie can make it around the world while the truth is waiting in line at Caribou”.

That’s the little swatch of human behavior that the Dayton campaign, and especially its’ money-laundering smear shop, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, seem to be hoping dominates the upcoming election.

Because to the extent that ABM’s strategy is intelligent, it’s in this way; a simple lie takes five seconds to tell; that same like will take sixty seconds to refute.  Do Minnesota voters have the attention span to absord sixty seconds of facts to counter five seconds of lying?

The GOP needs to hope so.

And if you’re ABM, or the DFL?  Do the phrases “A thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in Minnesota” and “Yes, We Can!” ring a bell?  They most certainly do to the people on the Dayton/Rockefeller family payrolls that are ginning up the dirtiest, most cynical political campaign in Minnesota history.

So I’m gonna get started on those sixty seconds right now.

ABM’s house blogger – inevitably anonymous (and, we’re told, paid) – writes:

Either Tom Emmer is still stuck on the first stage of grief because of his disastrous campaign to date,

Fact: Two points less “disastrous”, by all accounts, than Tim Pawlenty’s at this point in the race eight years ago.

which recently voted several staffers off the island,

Fact: What, campaigns never change staff?  The local jabbering class has spun the Emmer campaign’s turnover as some sort of unusual event after a primary.  Just plain dumb.

or he thinks that he’s campaigning to become governor of The Matrix. Tom Emmer’s most recent “I have absolutely no budget plan” distraction technique unveiled today is the red pill inspired: “There is no spoon”.

Fact:  Opinion:  Matrix references?  What next?  “Dayton is Spock, Emmer is Ferengi?”  Good lord, Emmer’s being attacked by the friggin’ chess club!

From Tom Emmer via MPR:

Where is the deficit? We talk about ‘You got to raise taxes, government has to invest.’ I’ll say it again, government in the state of Minnesota is scheduled to get a 7 percent increase in the next biennium. Government will have more money to spend in the next two years than it is spending right now.

You see, Minnesotans? There is no spoon. Whoa. The deficit is all in your head! If the budget crisis doesn’t exist –bam– no plan needed.

Fact: Opinion: ABM is a plan to employ the innumerate.

There might be a more civil explanation, but I got nothin’.

Even with his attempt to melt our minds by going all Neo on us, no one is fooled.

I’m having high school flashbacks.  Trekkies insisting they were really “TrekkERs”. “Live long and prosper”.  Ugh.  Must move on.

Despite Emmer’s selective accounting, we know we’re facing a historic budget crisis, and as Tom Scheck immediately points out, the major reason for the uptick in state spending cited by Emmer is that Tim Pawlenty’s kicking of the budgetary can is coming home to roost. (Mixed metaphors win elections)

I’m not sure if Tom Scheck of MPR is honest enough to point this out; it’s for sure ABM’s anonymous blogger is not.

Let’s accept that Tim Pawlenty “kicked a budgetary can” for sake of argument.

That “can” was made big and stinky by a DFL legislature that was fixed on raising spending, and especially using the state budget as a vehicle to launder money to help local governments hide their own rapacious spending – especially the DFL governments in the Twin Cities and Duluth, which got and get 250% more money than non-metro cities, entirely as a means to camouflage their ruinous spending and the costs of the DFL’s policy of warehousing the poor in the inner city.

With over a billion in school shifts and half a billion in temporary cuts coming off the chopping block, many of the gimmicks bullied through the legislature by Tim Pawlenty–with the full support of Tom Emmer and House Republicans– are putting the state in an even worse situation next year.

And all of that with an economy collapsing.  Wow. What do do?

What to do?

Instead of owning up to his role in the budget debacle we find ourselves in…

…that “role” being arguing for fiscal restraint against a DFL near-supermajority in the House that was fixed on spending first (and covering it with taxes from Minnesota’s productive classes) first and asking questions later.

— and provide us with what would actually be a “new direction” — Tom Emmer has decided to try and confuse us.

Fact: Opinion: In fairness to Emmer, it doesn’t seem like  it’d be that difficult a job…

Whether it’s mashing up $20 billion and 20%, or comparing Minnesota to a wagon full of Clydesdales, Tom Emmer is willing to say anything, except what he would actually do to the services we all use and rely on if he became governor.

Fact: The DFL and its paid spokeshamsters at ABM are being incredibly disingenuous.  Emmer has always said his plan will be out in September.  And so it will.  And it’s gonna turn the Dayton campaign on its ear, I have a hunch.

The problem? It’s pretty hard to dance around the fact that he introduced things like cutting the minimum wage while pushing for lower taxes on corporations.

Fact:  It’s even harder to dance around the fact that context is being waterboarded here.  Minimum wage cuts and lower corporate taxes are both proven means of creating more jobs.  Raising taxes and spending are both proven ways to kill (non-government) job growth.

We wont forget that — when he bothered to show up to vote– that he consistently sided with big businesses instead of working Minnesotans.

Where does this guy think “Working Minnesotans” work?

For the new direction the Minnesota needs someone ready to make the hard decisions to move us forward.

Speaking of “hard decisions”:  What is Dayton’s big proposal?  Besides “eat the [working] rich”, I mean?

We need someone who can lay out a plan to get Minnesota back on track, not more Pawlenty-styled governing by press release.

Well, you asked for a plan.  I suspect you’ll get one pretty quick here.

Then the fun will begin.

Earlier today, I bagged on the regional left for recycling each others’ stories long after they’ve been debunked.

It’s tempting to think it’s because they’re all talking from the same slate of topics. It’s so prevalent it’s also tempting to think that it’s a matter of top-down policy – to repeat not only the big lies but the little ones often enough that people start to believe it.

Over at Cackling Spoo, “Spot” repeats an old slander:

[GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer] also been a fan and financial supporter of Bradlee Dean…

Of course, if you want the facts about anything to do with politics, you need to go to a conservative blog.  This “issue” is no exception; we gut-shot that particular meme two months ago.

Twin Cities leftyblogs; continually confirming the adage “Distrust, then verify.  Then carry on with the distrust”.

After a month in which groups paid for largely by his family and cronies ran more smear ads than were run in the entire 2006 governor’s race, Mark Dayton suddenly wants to play it clean:

Just a day after he declared victory in the DFL gubernatorial primary, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton called for an end to all negative ads — including those from outside groups supporting him.

“I mean it,” he said.

He doesn’t mean it.

He’s posturing; trying to take the high road.  None of the groups supporting him (and paid for by him) are under the faintest obligation to obey.

Most importantly, the unions – who control their own political spending and don’t take orders from Dayton, nudge nudge wink wink – can do anything they want, spend as much as they want, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it (but heaven forfend that a business might be able to do the same thing).

Dayton is, at the very least, posturing.  At the most, perhaps, he might want to forestall future exposures of dirt in his record; the GOP’s “Erratic” ad is, truly, just the beginning.

The call comes weeks after the Democrat-supporting Alliance for a Better Minnesota released an ad smacking Republican Tom Emmer for past drunk driving charges and a day after the Minnesota Republican Party smacked Dayton for his past Senate history.

Minnesota has seen similar calls before — and seen absolutely nothing happen as a result.

And nothing will happen this time.  After months of paying for “independent” PACs to slime Emmer, Dayton’s current narrative is “I’m Being Swiftboated!”

In October of 2008, Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman decided he would pull all his negative ads (they are no longer available on YouTube) and asked his supporters to follow suit. None of his supporters listened and they continued to rip Democrat Al Franken on the air. Franken ended up winning that Senate election by 312 votes.

Unlike Dayton, Coleman was sincere.

Michael Brodkorb, deputy chair of the Republican Party, said Dayton’s calls was hypocritical and the party would only consider pulling its ad after it had run as much as the Alliance ad had. Right now, it appears the GOP doesn’t have the funding to run it that often.

Given that unlike A4aBM’s largely fallacious spots the GOP’s commercials are true, the spending gap may not tell the whole story.

In the DFL “Unity” rally yesterday, Mark Dayton – who has funded, along with his family, the most expensive orgy of attack advertising in Minnesota history, unprecedented in both its cost and its fallaciousness –  complained:

“I expected the smears to start right away, and they have.”

He was complaining, of course, because after a month of carping on Emmer’s 20 and 30 year old careless driving arrests (and lying about his legislative record), the GOP – not the Emmer campaign – took out an ad highlighting Dayton’s genuine and recent erratic behavior.

Leaving aside that the MNGOP’s ad buy will be a tiny fraction of what “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” spent smearing Tom Emmer (on the Dayton family dime), one must ask; is reporting facts – something A4aBM never tried in re Emmer’s record – a “smear”?  How does Dayton feel about the “smearing” that his family-funded PAC has been funding for the past month?

This is the beginning of the latest chanting point from the left.  On Tuesday night, Jeff Rosenberg of the leftyblog MNPublius – a good guy, but as reliable a barometer of the direction of DFL spin as exists in the Twin Cities lefty “alternative” media since Dusty Trice exited the blogging stage in a welter of snark-splat – tweeted his vision of the upcoming discourse:

Dayton/DFL: “We should really solve the budget problem.” Emmer/GOP: “MARK DAYTON IS A POOHEAD.:

Which is an interesting take, given that while Dayton, his family and cronies have funded more attack ads in the past month than ran in the entire 2006 campaign against Pawlenty.

So let me ask you this, Jeff Rosenberg and, by the way, every single other lefty commentator: name and document one single attack that has come from Tom Emmer in this cycle, against anyone; against any of his convention opponents, or Kelliher, Entenza, Horner or Dayton.

You can not, of course.  Emmer has taken an utterly scrupulous high road – as has his main political action committee, MNForward, funded by Minnesota businesses.

But expect this narrative over the next week or two; that Dayton is a victim!

Indeed, I’m going to go out on a thick, strong limb and say Dayton will issue nothing substantial for the next week; he’ll whing about being “Targetboated”, and he’ll redouble the efforts of  his goons at A4aBM.

Enjoy this, Minnesota.  This is your 2010 model DFL in action.

You gotta hand it to Nick Coleman.  While his sympathies for the lumpen gray Minnesota left were almost too obvious to joke about, he at least went to the trouble of hilariously claimaing to be “nobody’s monkey”.

But when the DFL puts out a street organ,  Jon Tevlin puts on a funny suit, grabs the handle and starts grinding:

Mark Dayton’s campaign ads tend to feature timeworn photos of his family’s department store downtown. For those old enough to remember, the pictures conjure memories of whimsical Christmas displays, fat old Santas and the smell of caramel corn wafting from the candy store.

Down the street, Target, the discount chain that Dayton’s launched, has carved a similarly feel-good atmosphere that makes us crave that lime green wastebasket or retro toaster, even if we don’t really need it.

Now that Target has jumped into the corporate political sweepstakes by donating $150,000 to an organization that supports Rep. Tom Emmer for governor, you have to wonder whether every American outing will eventually be tainted and influenced by the nasty politics that divide us.

You mean, like every child’s “outing” to school, every single day, is “tainted” now that the teachers’ union has donated at least twice as much to the anti-Emmer “Alliance for a Better Minnesota?”

By Tuesday, Target was on the defensive because of the immediate response of gays and lesbians, many of whom are no doubt valued “guests” of the Tar-zhay experience.

“We rarely endorse all advocated positions of the organizations or candidates we support, and we do not have a political or social agenda,” Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said.

Target offers domestic partner benefits and was a sponsor of the recent pride parade. But some gay groups are now criticizing Target because Emmer is against gay marriage.

And right there is your proof positive that Tevlin is getting his writing marching orders directly from the DFL.  Because while Emmer is no more a gay marriage supporter than most Minnesotans, he’s also correctly noted (in this Northern Alliance podcast from the State Fair) that the next governor of Minnesota has much, much bigger problems to deal with, and that it’s never really going to be an issue for that governor.

This is proof, by the way, that there is no way to appease the liberal special interest monster; as Tevlin notes, Target gives benefits to domestic partners, has aggressively led the way on “diversity in the workplace”, sponsors Minneapolis’ annual Pride rally, and among its 160-plus milllion in annual charitable giving are not a few bucks to gay-friendly non-profits.

But offend the gay political orthodoxy by supporting a candidate who supports business policies more palabable to Target’s board’s fiduciary duty, and you might as well be Andrew Dice Clay.

Like here:

OutFront asks that Target rescind the donation or give to one supporting candidates who fight for gay rights.

I have a better idea, Target; keep doing what you’re doing, and tell OutFront to go to WalMart.

I, on the other hand, like to think of our political system as a delicate product. So remember, Target, if you break it, you own it.

Does that mean Alida Messinger and the Minnesota Federation of Teachers are shoplifting?

Oh, by the way?

Thanks, Target.

Attention, Janet Napolitano:  You keep looking for the political terrorism and violence in American politics!

Here’s more of it!

Further proof that all of the real violence in American politics (as opposed to the imagined, “potential” or slanderously imputed) violence in American politics comes from the left.

(Via Gary at LFR)

 The Dems have officially run out of stuff to talk about.

So they’ve gone back to reruns of earlier tempests in teapots.

A “Jim Horan” fobbed a “story” off on “Talking Points Memo”  via  Twitter:

RT @tpmmedia: Flashback: Emmer Had Past DWIs — And Sponsored Bills To Soften DWI Laws http://tpm.ly/a244GP

Now, if you’ve been paying attention, all the smart people dealt with this “issue” quite some time ago.  The DWIs were in 1981 and 1991; Emmer sponsored legislation to make it possible for people who’d been convicted but kept their noses clean to get out of under some of the more onerous burdens of sentencing earlier.  I wrote the first time this issue emerged, when the issue came out before the GOP convention…:

…regarding a couple of DWI-related charges, that…Tom Emmer, got 19 and 29 years ago – questioning not only his character due to the arrests, but some legislation he backed that’d have had the effect of treating drunk drivers as innocent until proven guilty and making DUIs private information after ten years of good behavior – in other words, allowing people who’d made  a dumb mistake to function and get their lives back. Drunk driving is an emotional issue – made all the more so by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the drunk driving lobby.  It’s understandable; anyone who’s lost a loved one to a drunk driver is justifiably motivated to seek change.   But the .08 blood alcohol level limit is a ludicrious waste of resources, and the resources spent on hammering on first-time, only-time offenders with low levels of intoxication are largely a complete waste.

Question:  Does saying the above mean I “support” or am “soft on” drunk drivers and drunk driving?

But it’s ludicrous to treat attempts to make the system fairer and more rational as “sympathy for drunk drivers”.  Almost as ludicrous as assuming two mistakes made a generation ago are defining traits about a late-fortysomething guys’ judgment.

 All the smart people dealt with this issue three months ago.

But DFL propaganda is never aimed at smart people.

Oh, yeah – who’s pushing the story?  Who is “Jim Horan?”

He’s working for Independence Party candidate stealth DFLer Tom Horner:

Screenshot from LinkedIn

That sound you hear?  It’s the sound of Tom “Weasel” Horner’s campaign scraping the ground below the bottom of the barrel.

So far in this campaign, as the DFL hammers its way toward its primary next month, most of the attacks against Tom Emmer have come from a shadowy group, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.

I’ve busted them repeatedly stretching the truth and/or lying; Channel Five followed suit earlier this week.

But who are these people?  And where did they get the money to run all these slick (if utterly truth-free) ads, and all these posh (but amateurishly-designed) websites?

Because they run through a lot of money!

2006 Campaign – We first heard of “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (A4aBM) during the 2006 campaign.  During that outing, A4aBM spent $2,545,162 – about $2.3 million of it in ads against Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Where did that money come from?

Their donor list is as follows:

• CWA COPE $5,000
• MAPE $5,000
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $5,000
• MN AFL-CIO $5,000
• United Food Comml Workers $7,500
• Ma Mah Wi No Min Fund1 (Mille Lacs Tribe) $7,000

Unions and Native American gambling interests so far; no big surprises.

• Tom Kayser (MN) $7,500  [One of Mike Ciresi’s cronies]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $15,000
• MN Nurses $15,000
• United Steelworkers $22,000
• Afscme Council 5 – $25,000
• Lks and Plains Carpenters $25,000
• IBEW MN State Council $25,000
• Intl Union of Operating Engineers $25,000
• America Votes MN $30,040 [aka “ACORN 2.0“]
• Coalition for Progress $50,000 (Mich)
• Laborers Dist Cncl $60,000
• Pat Stryker (CO) $100,000
• SEIU MN State Cncl $100,000
• Educ. MN $135,000
• Tim Gill (CO) $300,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $746,000
• Win Minnesota $778,500;

So – out of two and a half million dollars spent, about 20% – about $449,000 – came from those whom I thought were the most likely suspects, the unions.

And nearly 2/3 came from two sources – “Alida Messinger”, and a group called “Win Minnesota”.

We’ll come back to both of them.

2010 Campaign So Far – To date in the gubernatorial campaign, A4aBM has raised $93,386 (as of this past Tuesday).  They’d spent $72,383 of it as of Tuesday (on ads that were, as we ascertained earlier this week, wall to wall bullcrap).   Of that $93,386, 79.636 of it came from the “Win Minnesota PAC”.

So that’s two election cycles in a row (so far) where “Win Minnesota” has been the leading funder of scabrous hit pieces against Republican candidates.

Win Minnesota?  Seems pretty innocuous, doesn’t it?

Who is “Win Minnesota”, And Who Funds Them? – Here’s the list of major contributors to “Win Minnesota” during the 2006 campaign.  I’ll be adding the emphasis for reasons that’ll become fairly obvious:

• Anne Bartley (San Fran) $25,000 [Linked via the Rockefeller foundation to Alida Messinger – whose maiden name was “Rockefeller” and who…well, we’ll get back to that.  She’s also linked to Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Leadership Council” and former Clinton administration figure]
• Shayna Berkowitz (Mpls) $100,000; ]
• John Cowles (Mpls) $20,000; [Why yes, the former Strib publisher!  But don’t you dare say the Strib is biased!]
• Andrew Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• David Dayton (Mpls) $5,000;
• Eric Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• Mark Dayton (Mpls) $25,000;
• Mary Lee Dayon (Mpls) $100,000;
• Vanessa Dayton $1,000;
• Sandra Ferry (NY) $50,000; [Yet another Rockefeller – sister of Alida Messinger]
• Barbara Forster (Mpls) $25,000; [generic liberal with deep pockets]
• Roger Hale (Mpls) $100,000; [Former Daytons’ executive]
• John Harris (PA)$20,000;
• Myron Kunin $5,000; [Hair care tycoon]
• Kim Lund (Mpls) $25,000
• Darlene Luther 47A Committee $10,000 ;
• alida Messinger (NY) $165,000;
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $20,000;
• Linda Pritzker (TX) $30,000; [Scionette of the Hyatt fortune, big-time liberal with deep pockets; major donor to MoveOn.org]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $10,000;
• Tina Smith (Mpls) $10,000;
• Linde Uihlein (WI)$100,000; [Schlitz heiress, long-time political plutocrat]
• Julie Zelle (MN) $5,000

That was a lot of Daytons, and people linked with the Daytons…wasn’t it?

So how about this year?

So far in 2010, “Win Minnesota” lists the following donors to “Win Minnesota”‘s current warchest (currently worth $1,173,500), again with emphasis added by me:

• Andrew Dayton $1,000
• David Dayton $50,000
• John cowles $25,000 [Remember him from 2006?]
• MaryLee Dayton $250,000
• Emily Tuttle (MN) $5,000
• Ronald Sternal (MN) $5,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $500,000
• James Deal (MN) $50,000
• Roger Hale (MN) $10,000 [Remember him from above?]
• Barbara forster (MN) $25,000
• Democratic Governors Association $250,000;

So of the $1.1 and change million warchest, $851,000 came from Daytons, and Alida Messinger.

But wait!  There is another fund registered with the state, with a different account number but with the same email and street addresses, that has $850,000 socked away but has spent no money.

And where did that $850,000 come from?

• Alida Messinger (Mpls) $50,000
• Win Minnesota $50,000
• Education MN $250,000
• Laborers District Council $100,000
• MAPE $50,000
• IBEW MN State Council $50,000
• MN Nurses Assc $50,000
• Local 49 Engineers $25,000
• Vance Opperman $50,000
• Afscme Council 5 $50,000
• MN AFL-CIO $25,000
• SEIU MN State Council $50,000
• AFSCME (Wash DC) $50,000;

And who is this Alida Messinger who has contributed so mightily – over $1.46 million over the past four years! – to the cause of disinforming Minnesotans about Republicans?  Other than the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller III?

The ex-wife of candidate Mark Dayton.

So “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” is essentially a front for a group of unions and, to the tune of millions over the past four years, Mark Dayton’s family, friends and ex-wife.

They are paying millions of dollars to advertise – and hiding it from casual view behind two layers of astroturf.

Mark Dayton is trying to buy the election, but he’s taking great pains to make sure you don’t know about it.

The “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” – an astroturf group sponsored by a consortium of DFL-linked pressure groups – has been behind much of the smear-mongering against Tom Emmer so far this campaign. They’ve occupied themselves with a klutzy false-flag website, a couple of twitter accounts (one of baldfaced propaganda, and one, “StuffEmmerSays”, that tried to mock Emmer statements but actually made him sound like Ronald Reagan to the point I spent the last month mocking it as a pro-GOP site; it seems to have worked, and the account seems to have demised).

And if that’s the best the DFL can do, this election’s not going to be nearly as hard as I’d worried.

“A4aBM” ran the first anti-Emmer ad of the campaign this week; and the Republican Twitterverse has been redounding with bits and pieces of the information A4aBM got wrong.

Long story short; the ad is warm runny bulls**t.

Claim #1: Audio: “Tom Emmer sided with Governor Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force corporations and CEOs to pay their fair share of taxes”  ABMBackup: “On May 18, 2009, Emmer voted against the second attempt at a DFL- written FY2010-2011 revenue bill…

Sounds pretty gnarly, huh?

The Truth: Tom Emmer did not cast a vote on this roll call.

Oh, my.  You mean, A4aBM got a fact wrong?

Well, the ad is 0-1 so far.

Claim #2: Audio: “They cut funding for education” ABM Backup: “On April 18, 2007, Emmer voted against HF 6, the K-12 funding bill, which passed the House with a huge bipartisan majority of 119-13. On May 8, 2007, Emmer again voted against the bill as it was re-passed on a similar 119-14 vote…

Voted against it twice?  Emphasis added:

The Truth: After April 18, 2007, there were no additional votes taken on this bill that year.  During the 2008 session, this bill was used as a “vehicle” and a delete-all amendment was added completely changing the bill.  The vote they reference on May 8, 2007 was actually a vote on May 8, 2008 and it wasn’t a vote on the bill but, rather, a procedural vote on whether the bill should be taken from the table.  Emmer voted against taking the bill from the table.

You’re trying to say A4aBM lied about the real intent of voting on a picayune procedural technicality in the life of a background-noise bill to try to smear Tom Emmer?  Say it isn’t so!

0-2 so far.

Claim #3: Audio: “[Tom Emmer and Tim Pawlenty] cut funding for education.”

The Truth: There is nothing in the bill cited that included a cut to education.  In addition, KSTP’s Tom Hauser recently had this to say about the claim that Governor Pawlenty cut education funding: “As for Pawlenty cutting education funding, that’s not true.  According to the education department, per pupil funding has gone up since 2004.”

0-3 – well, more like 0-4, really.

Claim #4: Audio: “[Emmer voted to cut] job training.”

The Truth: Nowhere in ABM’s backup is there any support for this claim.  “Training” is mentioned only once in the legislation, and that is in reference to home ownership education.  This bill had nothing to do with job training.

Zero for five.

Claim #5: Audio: “[Emmer and Pawlenty cut] job training and health care”.  On screen: “Source: Minnesota House Journal, 4/25/2005”

The Truth: According to the Minnesota House of Representatives Journal, the House was not in session on 4/25/2005, meaning there could be no Journal of the House for that day.  The Alliance’s citation, therefore, does not even exist.

So the lesson for today is, whenever “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” speaks, distrust and then verity.

Because the DFL asssumes that you, the people, are too stupid to know any better.

During the 2006 election, the Star/Tribune ran a story about Alan Fine, the GOP candidate for the Minnesota house against then-candidate, now-representative Keith Ellison.

The piece, with a byline from reporters Rochelle Olson and Paul McEnroe, but which reportedly included a lot of reporting from Erik Black, dropped right before the election, and covered a 12-year-old domestic violence case in which Fine was arrested after a reported altercation with his then-wife.

I looked at the story and thought, for a variety of reasons, that it stank to high heaven.  Scott Johnson at Powerline , being a lawyer, was able to put fact, or lack of it, to the   Strib’s “coverage”; the Strib piece omitted the facts that there was no physical evidence of abuse, no charges were ever filed, the arrest was expunged from Fine’s record, that Fine had eventually won custody of their minor child (a rarity in contested divorces in Minnesota), and Fine’s ex-wife later went on to get arrested for…domestic abuse.

I asked the Strib why all these facts got left out of Olson and McEnroe’s story.

“It was an editorial decision; there wasn’t enough room”, went the response.   But that was dodgy; in an exercise in which I left out some of the puffery and marginalia from Olson and McEnroe’s original story, I got in all the facts with plenty of room to spare (in terms of word count and column-inches).

So you may ask; why did the Strib run an incomplete story that related an inaccurate story that served only to slander a Republican candidate against the candidate that the DFL and Star/Tribune both endorsed?

Do I need to start over, or what?

———-

The problem is, if last week is any indication, the regional media is getting worse – even more selective in its relation of fact, bespeaking an even more bald-faced desire to get Democrats elected.

Last week, the Strib’s Pat Doyle ran a piece purporting to report on some of Tom Emmer’s legal wranging.  I covered it at the time,  calling it a “dog bites man” story of a lawyer…practicing law, and dealing with some of the collateral stresses that come with practicing small-town law; an embezzling office manager, a complaint from a former client, some other issues.  Even on a “Dog Bites Man” level, the story was thin, runny gruel.

The single story of the four that seemed to perhaps hold water was the tale of the landscaper that, to read Doyle’s account, lost a lawsuit against Emmer and his wife Jacquie.

Now, if you take Doyle’s account at face value, Emmer looks like a parsimonious weasel who wriggled out of a bill on a technicality:

In small claims court, District Judge Kathleen Mottl awarded Poppler his entire claim. She added that Emmer’s “request for reimbursement of ‘attorney’s fees’ is wholly inappropriate, as he represented himself.”

Emmer took his appeal to District Court, where his lawyer argued that he wasn’t responsible for the landscaping bill because his wife had initiated and modified the job.

Earlier, Mottl had disagreed with that notion. “She essentially did so as her husband’s agent,” she wrote.

But District Judge Dale Mossey ruled that Emmer was not responsible for his wife’s actions. Poppler said Jacquie Emmer has not paid the $1,237.

He said he’s considering suing her, but he is concerned about attorney’s fees.

Sounds pretty damaging.

And sources out on the campaign trail tell me that the tale has raised some eyebrows.

But Doyle’s story is missing some key facts.

———-

A Minnesota Tenth District Court document, “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Order” for Case Number CV-07-7141, filed on December 28, 2007, includes the following “Findings of Fact” (transcribed from the order), relates the conclusions of the judge, after a December 13 hearing in Buffalo between Tony Poppler and defeandant Tom Emmer.:

1. In May of 2006, Jacquie Emmer contacted Plaintiff, seeking the performance of landscaping work.  Plaintiff and Ms. Emmer discussed the scope of the work and the price to perform that work.  Plaintiff and Ms. Emmer entered into an oral contract to perform the work.
2. On June 22 and 23, 2007, Plaintiff performed the work requested.  During the work, Mrs. Emmer requested additional work to be performed and Plaintiff agreed to perform it.  Part of this additional work included removal of certain dirt.  Mrs. Emmer and Plaintiff did not discuss the specific cost of the additional work.
3. Defended is married to Mrs. Emmer.  During the course of the project, Defendant looked over some of the work that had been performed and said that it looked good.
4. Defendant never asked Plaintiff to perform any work whatsoever.  defendant never agreed to pay for removal of dirt.  There is no evidence that Defendant directed Mrs. Emmer to seek landscaping services or to remove dirt.
5. Plaintiff has been compensated for all materials and labor except for, possibly, the removal of dirt.  Plaintiff does not seek recovery from Defendant or Mrs. Emmer under any theory of contract.  Plaintiff does not seek recovery from Mrs. Emmer under any theory.  Plaintiff seeks recovery from Defendant on a quasi contract theory of unjust enrichment.

Re-read number five.   It says that, as a matter of fact, Poppler didn’t try to sue Mrs. Emmer, the person with whom he had the “contract”.  He’s trying to get the money out of Tom Emmer for “unjust enrichment“.

The “Conclusions of Law” are pretty succinct:

1. Plaintiff’s performance of landscaping work at the direction of Mrs. Emmer does not unjustly enrich Defendant. Schumacher v. Schumacher, 627 N.W. 2d 725, 729 (Minn App. 2001).

In other words, the basis of Poppler’s suit – that Tom Emmer was “unjustly enriched” by the flap between he and Jacquie Emmer – had no basis in law.

And the “Order for Judgment” is one simple line:

1. Defendant is entitled to dismissal of Plaintiff’s claims, with prejudice, and to tax his costs.

I’m no lawyer, but it looks as if Mr. Poppler and Jacquie Emmer had a misunderstanding about billing – even though as the court directly noted, he was paid for everything but the dirt removal.  Poppler went after Tom Emmer and, after an appeal, lost, and was compelled to pay Tom Emmer’s court costs.

A source with knowledge of the situation emailed: “Basically, [Poppler] didn’t sue Jacquie because he couldn’t – he did not have a contract and he would have lost. So he tried to sue Tom for “unjust enrichment.” In the findings of fact, the judge wrote that he didn’t have a case against Jacquie. He ruled that the guy sued the wrong person. And he gave Tom court costs. A clear victory for the Emmers“.

But to hear Pat Doyle tell the story, you’d think it was one of a pettifogging attorney welching out on a contractor, and getting away with it on a petty technicality.

Pat Doyle would seem to have printed all the news that fit…the Strib’s narrative.  It’s of a piece with the 2006 smear of Alan Fine, the 2000 smear by association of Rod Grams (reporting on his son Morgan’s addication problems while omitting the fact that Grams had had very little contact with his son; his ex-wife had custory), and other among the Strib’s greatest hits, and might prompt a thinking person to say “there’s a pattern here”.

I will be asking Pat Doyle for comment.  Don’t hold your breath; most Strib and PiPress reporters seem to think they’re above answering questions from peasants.

To:  Ben Adler

From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant

Re:  Your supernaturally stupid Newsweek piece

Mr. Adler,

I’m convinced that your piece, “Why doesn’t the media interrogate Tea Partiers’ Beliefs”, was a “black” parody written by a Tea Partier as a spoof of arrogant, agenda-driven inside-the-beltway dismissal and the media’s own smug self-satisfaction.

You wrote:

The media’s enduring, and understandable, fascination with the Tea Party movement continues unabated, as this weekend’s coverage demonstrates. Unfortunately, what appear to be false notions of objectivity—or perhaps a lack of interest in policy—is preventing that coverage from illuminating what the movement actually represents and what it would do if empowered.

“The Media” started its coverage of the Tea Parties in April of 2009 first by trying to pretend it didn’t exist.  Then it collaborated with the Democrats’ juvenile mockery for most of the spring. Then it dutifully chanted that the Tea Party was a bunch of violent rednecks.   Then it dutifully chanted in turn that it was a bunch of rich bitter white guys.

No, Ben Adler, I’m pretty convinced that it’s you that’s completely ignorant…

…no.  That’s unfair.  Or, rather, too fair.  I’m convinced it’s you that is driven completely by an institutional narrative about all those uppity peasants.

Case in point: the Associated Press just published a 2,300-word stemwinder examining how and why a variety of individuals became involved in the Tea Party movement without once asking what precisely the platform consists of. It tells you the back stories of representative Tea Partiers, dutifully quotes their antipathy toward government, taxes, and deficit spending, and their horror at the accusation that they are motivated by racial animus. But the reporter seems never to have posed any serious questions about what tradeoffs they would make to achieve their stated goals.

Well, that would be a fair criticism, if it weren’t for the fact that you pretty clearly have substituted “parrot the narrative” for “asking serious questions”, yourself.

No, really:

The closer you look, the more the Tea Party just looks like any other right-wing populist movement: it is motivated by fear of immigration, fear of new religious modes of expression, racial resentments, opposition to gay rights, and claims about taxes and spending that often don’t add up under scrutiny. Isn’t it time that we stopped treating the Tea Partiers like a curious sociological phenomenon and starting holding them to the same standards we should hold all mainstream politicians to?

Like the standards Newsweek held Barack Obama to?

Ben Adler:  you are the one that deserves the questions; your piece clearly oozes fear and beliefs that, ahem, could use the scrutiny – beliefs the AP article undercut, which is no doubt why  you are circling the wagons.

So here’s what we can do, Ben:  come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Ed Morrissey and I this weekend.  We can have a dialogue; you can ask us those probing questions about the Tea Parties that you’ve been fantasizing about.  It’ll be a two-way deal, of course; we can get to the bottom of your own ignorance, and maybe even enlighten you a bit.

Or at the very least start holding you to the same standard we should all mainstream media figures.

That is all,

Mitch Berg

ME:  Hi!

REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF LIBERALS (RGOL):  Conservatism is fundamentally racist!

ME: Um – beg your pardon?

“RGOL”:  Racism oozes from every pore of conservatism!

ME:  OK, that’s what we call “bigotry” where I come from, but what the hell, I love a good ad-hominem argument.  Do tell!

“RGOL”:  Nixon’s “southern strategy” brought all the racists to the GOP!

ME: Er, let’s get back to “the south” in a bit here.  You did read my post last week about Jacob Weisberg’s article in that noted racist conservative hangout Slate, that noted there are distinct differences between Northeastern, Southern and Western conservatism, right?  How Northeastern conservatism is largely comfortable with big government but with an emphasis on making big government more fiscally sane – think Mitt Romney – and race is largely a non-entity, and in fact part of the roots of Northeastern conservatism are at least partly in the abolition movement?  And how Western conservatism, the conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan, is fundamentally libertarian, which means racism is anathema, since libertarian government is utterly color blind, and all real racism – the racism that makes people unequal before the law – is entirely a function of excessive and illegitimate government power, right?  Which leaves southern conservatism, which certainly had racists among its adherents, but whose fundamental “racism” is at least partly a matter of framing by, well liberals?

“RGOL”:  Of course we did.  Now – look at this list of southern conservatives and the racist things they’ve said…

ME: OK, you’re more or less dodging the point here.  Can individuals be racist?  Certainly.  I mean, every human in the world is a “we-ist”, more comfortable around and attuned to people like their own community, and less to to people less like them in ways that are manifested as everything from pointed humor to muted suspicion to blind hatred.

“RGOL”:  Right.  Like conservatism!

ME:  Well, no.  Liberals too.  I mean, mention, say, a white fundamentalist from Mississippi who resurfaces driveways for a living…

“RGOL”:  Hah!  Dumb redneck wingnut!

ME:  …or an NRA member…

“RGOL”:  Bigger gun clinging snake-handling cousin-kissing Jeeeeeebus freak hahahahahahahaha!

ME: ….right, or Sarah Palin…

“RGOL”:  Hahahahaha!  She went to community college!  Trig is Bristol’s baby!  She can’t even write and has fake boobs and slept with her deputy mayor and …

ME:  …or the Japanese…

“RGOL”:  Er…what?

ME:  Well, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the godfather of the modern nannystate, did not only order the most singularly racist government action in the past 100 years – the mass internment of American citizens of Japanese descent – but did it after two terms in which he supported California’s deeply racist anti-Japanese immigration laws.

“RGOL”: …

ME: OK, fine, it was seventy years ago.  Still, your entire case that “conservatism oozes racism”  seems to be based on 1) a bunch of anecdotal stories of Republicans who said racist things 2) a bunch of memes from Media Matters and the like, that largely yank statements by the likes of Rush Limbaugh so far out of context you’re getting into borderline defamation, and 3) framing conservative issues as fundamentally racist.

To which I reply 1) Why does Robert Byrd never make it into those lists, 2) Gosh, a liberal flak group waterboarding context, notify the media, and 3) when your entire argument is designed to try to misleadingly frame your opponent as something evil – and we all agree that racism is a bad thing, right? – then you are committing a crime against truth!

“RGOL”:  What are you talking about?

ME: For example, every time a conservative talks about strengthening the Tenth Amendment, some idiot lefty will come back with “That sounds like “states rights”, which was once used to defend slavery.

“RGOL”:  Right!   Conservatism supports slavery!

ME:  {{facepalm}} No.  No, we are pretty much the opposite extreme; we are the party of individual self-determination.  And, by the way, it is a fact that Jim Crow after 1900 was largely a government initiative that overrode the free market; that in most southern states, the business community – which are stereotypically conservative, right?…

“RGOL”:  Bosses!  Bosses!

ME: …right.  They largely opposed Jim Crow, since Jim Crow took anywhere from 10 to 50% out of their markets!

“RGOL”:  But the southerners were racists!  And Nixon brought them into the GOP!

ME:  Well, no and yes and no.  The “Southern Strategy” sought votes from southerners who were upset over a variety of things – federal intrusions into property rights and free association as a matter of principle, the size and growth of government, and the federalization of an awful lot of things that had always been left to the states.  And yes, there were no doubt some among ’em that were upset that the Feds poked their nose into race relations – because a racist citizen’s vote counts just as much as yours does.  Which galls the crap out of me when I see some of those anti-semitic filth at left-leaning demonstrations, by the way – but I digress.  The framing of all southern conservatives’ flight to the GOP as race-related has become part of the conventional wisdom, to the extent that all defenses of the thesis become tautological.  Just watch:  “The southern strategy was not primarily about race”.

“RGOL”:  But the southern strategy was racist because it brought racist southerners into the party…

ME:  Thanks.  I rest my case.

“RGOL”:  …um…

ME:  Move along.

“RGOL”:  Yeah?  Well…what about Arizona?

ME:  Jeez.  More framing.  The Arizona law – which most Americans support, in its final form – is about securing our borders.  That is one of the missions of government, no?

“RGOL”:  But it’s racist!

ME:   Huh?  Let me ask you something; if Minnesota were awash in Canadians sneaking across the border, and illegal Canadian immigration were forcing down American wages, and if in coming here they rejected American culture and upheld Canadian culture with their back-bacon and hockey-worship and mass drunkenness, and if the Canadian Army were charging across the border to help out Canadian drug smugglers and killing people on our side of the border, that “illegal” Gordon Fitzpatrick wouldn’t replace the “illegal” Juan Jimenez as the boogeyman du jour?

“RGOL”:  But that’s just dumb.

ME:  What if our hypothetical Gordon Fitzpatrick was pro-charter schools and anti-card-check?

“RGOL”:  Then he’d be racist and he’d hate children…

ME:  Er, yeah.  Look – do our laws mean anything, or do they not? Are we a sovereign nation, or are we not?

“RGOL”:  Er…huh?

ME:  …

“RGOL”: You are obviously a racist.

ME:  Riiiiight.

So yesterday, as Mr. Dillettante notes, Bob Collins of MPR (writing at “Gather.com”) and I got into a rhubarb over the interpretation and meaning of a sign he saw at Jason Lewis’  annual Tax Cut Rally last weekend, and the fact that it was displayed at all. 

In his article on Gather, Collins posted the photo – of a sign that says “Tax Cuts: Even A Monkey Can Do It”, with some form of stylized hand-drawn chimpanzee in the middle.   He also posted a link to a WaPo article that notes that the Tea Party is countering the “perception” of racism (shown in a series of polls that that while Tea Partiers overwhelmingly say that they are not motivated by racism, Democrats really really double-dog believe they are.

To summarize Collins’ point, between his article and the comment he left  (and feel free to jump in if anyone thinks I’m summarizing unfairly):

1. A “perception” exists that the Tea Party is at least partly motivated by racism.
2. There is no doubt whatsoever that the sign was racist.
3. If the presence of so much as one sign doesn’t prove the “perception” correct, the fact that nobody kicked him out of the rally does.

As Bob put it in one line, “the medium is the message”.

My response:

1. Of course you can find racists at Tea Parties.  No movement of several million people – especially one with absolutely no barriers to entry whatsoever – is going to be free of at least at thin film of bigots and idiots.  You’ll find them at a “Prairie Home Companion” taping, for that matter.
2. The odds are better than even that the person holding the sign was a ringer – a lefty like this very special young fella who gets his jollies presenting his opposition in the most loathsome possible light by providing a living caricature of it.
3. Even if it wasn’t a ringer, to a big chunk of the population here in 92% white Minnesota, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar a monkey is just a monkey, more a symbol of simple-minded rote cognitive simplicity than a racist slur.  Granted, one has to tread lightly around terms like that when an Afro-American is the subject, but I think Collins is at some risk of superimposing his own templates and prejudices onto the topic.
4. This is not only Minnesota – the land of millions of Scandinavians who won’t return an undercooked egg to the kitchen for fear of raising a fuss, much less confront an offensive stranger –  but a rally full of people who are inclined to be libertarians; who believe, as a matter of principle, that everyone, even the most depraved, as a right to free speech, and that indulging in stupid, bigoted speech reflects on them, not on oneself.  (To say nothing of people, like me, who are pretty much oblivious to signs anyway).  It’s whythe last Tea Party rally detailed a security group specifically to find, photograph and discredit such signs (which, in news that is completely unrelated, I’m sure, didn’t appear at that Tea Party rally).
5. The “perception” exists because the Adminitration and the mainstream media – pardon the very deliberate redundancy – want it to exist. As the Media Research Center noted, the major-media’s coverage of the Tea Parties has been so consistently dismissive, slanted, biased and wrong that it’s very difficult to believe it’s not part of a concerted pattern; in other words, the “perception” exists because the mainstream media, and the administration it overwhelmingly supports, wants that perception to exist, no matter how it has to waterboard context and mangle fact to make it happen.  Indeed; the mainstream media (as the MRC noted) devoted slavering coverage to the tiny fringe of racist and off-color signs at Tea Parties, but utterly ignored Pajamas Media’s successful effort to expose a large number of these “racists” as lefty ringers – but the drumbeat of stories and “infotainment” about the Tea Parties’ supposed “racism” didn’t take so much as a breath.

Or to put it in one line; “2+2=The Narrative, Winston”.

So I’d like to follow up the discussion with a few questions of my own.

1. So after the Seattle WTO riots, the union roughing up the Young Republicans at the Minnesota State Fair and breaking into the state GOP campaign office in 2006, the conviction of a would-be firebomber in connection with the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, the assault on a Tea Partier at Senator Carnahan’s office (with racial epithets, against a black man, no less), the Bill Sparkman suicide, the professor and out-of-control Obama supporter murdering her five colleagues, the Bush-deranged guy in Texas crashing his plane into an IRS office, the Pentagon Station shootings (by another BDS sufferer), and the violence and vandalism-prone immigration rallies, is there a “percpeption” that the American left is prone to meeting dissent with thuggish and violent behavior?
2. If not – in other words, if a years-long pattern of thuggishness and violence doesn’t create every bit as much an “perception” as the selective display of some ignorant and racist (and likely spurious) signs – then why not?
3. Could it be because the industry that creates these “perceptions” is selective about the “perceptions” it chooses to create and propagate?
4. If not, why?

I’ll welcome any actual answers.

You pretty much expect the DFL to lie about things; they’re stuck behind an administration that is becoming less popular daily and a Congress that might, maybe, outpoll Charles Manson.  They’re strapped to a Healthcare bill that is about to blow up in their faces, electorally. 

And at a time when jobs are tight and even legal immigrants have had enough of illegal immigration, they are flogging the idea of open borders.

The facts of their own positions are against them.  You can hardly expect them not to aim for the gutter.

This little fella’s name is Robert Erickson.  He joined the Emmer “Cinco De Mayo” parade – but he’s no Emmer supporter:

The handmade sign says "Your Papers Please".

He writes a leftyblog called “Columbus Go Home” (I’m not going to link it; too depressing).  If you see him at a parade, he should be politely asked to leave.

Since the Democrats have no actual counterarguments, and they’re losing in all the polls that matter, we have to be all the more vigilant about things like false-flag dirty tricks and dumbed down chanting points like these…

Macalester coeds display their solidarity with their Latina sistas.

…aimed at voters who just don’t know any better, it’s vital the Republican activists watch out for things like Mr. Erickson, with too much time on their hands and too little respect for other’s free speech.

WELCOME, “PHOENIX WOMAN” READERS: Glad you stopped by!  Just to clarify, though – whenever leftybloggers say that people like me “seethe with envy” or are “having a cow” or are “melting down”, they are pulling it (to phrase it in Latin, which is so much classier than English) De Anus. 

Of course, “she” would be accountable for this sort of thing – if she blogged under her actual name.

Perhaps that’s why “she” stays anonymous…

Back in March, the left crowed with great glee about the arrest of nine members of the “Hutaree”, a self-styled Christian “Militia” group in Michigan.

The left and media (pardon the redundancy) saw this as the long-awaited proof that the American Right, afroth with racism over Barack Obama, was about to launch an “avalanche of violence” to vent its hatred toward the plucky black President.  They wheeled up the big guns; the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose job it is to see right-wing threats under every rock, reported right-wing threats…under every rock.

They needed something, of course; after setting up a prophylactic narrative in the days after the March 20 passage of Obamacare, the Democrats, led by Steny Hoyer, launched a meme about right-wing violence that impugned and defamed nearly every “out” conservative in the country – but has not to date yielded any violence (short of a still-unexplained “cut gas line” that has tellingly diappeared from the media).

So the Hutaree were a lifeline; a tank of rhetorical oxygen for a meme that was on life support.  Obama and the Dems needed to have Nine Redneck Terrorists, and the Feds obligingly provided them Public Enemies One Through Nine.

But over the past few days, a judge has tossed the Feds’ entire justification for holding them without bail, and raised serious questions about the soundness, and indeed the motivations, of the Feds’ case.

Archy Cary at BigJo runs down the case’s history – read it ASAP if you please – and asks the important question (emphasis added by me):

Here’s the question the MSM needs to ask, but won’t: Was this flamboyant raid primarily driven by political rather than law enforcement motives?

Was the arrest of the Hutaree militia Attorney General Eric Holder’s effort to manufacture an imminent right-wing extremist threat for political purposes?

Just asking.

Fearless prediction:  the Feds will drag this through court as long as they can.  They will lean on the Hutaree as hard as they can with the full weight of federal law enforcement, reinforcing the great Federal prerogative, “you can not afford to fight us”, squeezing them into a plea deal that allows the Administration and Media (ptr) to claim with a straight-ish face that of course there’s a threat!  People got convicted!  Nah nah nah I can’t hear you!

I’ve never cared much for Michael Savage.

And so I’ve never gotten one of his “liberalism is a mental disorder” T-shirts.

But the left seems to want so badly to presume that the right in America – especially the obstreporous, color-outside-the-lines right that’s making so much hay these days – represents some sort of depravity that I think some sort of diagnosis – clinical Narcissism? – might just apply.

Back as far as 9/12 (or maybe 9/13) I remember liberals chanting “the real danger is still home-grown militias”.  And every time there’s an incident these days, that wistful hope – that their fellow Americans are really a bunch of murderout animals – comes back to the front.

Over the weekend, before the arrest of the TImes Square bomber, we had Mayor Bloomberg   fairly hyperventilating at the possibility that the suspect would turn out to be a tea partier – a representative of a moment that has never had so much as a face slap attributed to it:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on Katie Couric’s show Monday night to discuss the attempted car bombing in Times Square. Between reassuring viewers at home that New York was safe and praising the city’s resilient spirit, Bloomberg wondered aloud if the culprit behind the Times Square car bomb was “a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something.”

Hizzoners’s wishful thinking was brutally let down when t Faisal Shahzad didn’t turn out to be a Tea Partier at all.

So intense is the left’s lust for this blood libel that left publications from The Nation to  the Daily Kos to tony leftybloggers to wannabee journalists citing “anonymous sources” that just knew that every liberals fantasy was going to come true, the left, fresh off of eight years of demanding that the right stop its (nonexistent) threats to their patriotism, seems to have developed an affirmative need to slander half of this nation.

So when are that tiny film of responsible liberals going to demand better of your leaders?

What started out as a case seemingly designed to impugn the Tea Party and all dissent against government…

…is turning, so far, into a sign that Janet Napolitano really, really needed a diversion:

Federal authorities touted the arrests of nine members of a Michigan militia as a pre-emptive strike against homegrown terrorists, declaring at an initial court hearing that the suspects with “dark hearts and evil intent” wanted to go to war against the government.

Five weeks later, prosecutors are scrambling to regroup after a judge questioned the strength of their evidence by ordering the so-called rebels released until trial and saying they had a right to “engage in hate-filled, venomous speech.”

“The government is falling short,” said David Griem, a former federal prosecutor who’s not involved in the case. “The message that’s been sent to the community is there are problems with this case.”

During two days of hearings last week before U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts, prosecutors tried to show how dangerous they perceived the Hutaree militia to be by playing secretly recorded conversations. Those talks, however, revealed no specific plot. Under questioning by defense attorneys, the FBI’s lead agent on the case seemed unprepared.

Were the Hutaree a group of convenient “usual suspects” rounded up at a time the Administration needed to discredit all dissent outside the Beltway – Tea Parties, bitter gun-clinging Jesus freaks and Republicans all at the same time?

For a while, I wondered if “Tom” wasn’t the MNGOP’s gubernatorial candidate’s middle name.  Listening to the Minnesota media, one might think his first name is “Right-wing-Extremist”.

In the meantime, they christened his opponent and erstwhile sparring partner in the House, Margaret Anderson-Kelliher, as a “moderate”. 

But Rachel Stassen-Berger, writing in the Strib, notes that I if Emmer is an “extremist”, then so is Kelliher; their voting records almost perfectly mirror one another:

Check out how various organizations rated the two House colleagues. The scores below are based on 2009 votes, unless otherwise noted:

AFSCME Council 5 (The state employees union)

Emmer — 0 percent

Kelliher — 100 percent

Clean Water Action (These are based on 2008 votes. The groups rates lawmakers votes for “our water, our health and our environment.”)

Emmer — 0 percent

Kelliher — 100 percent

Conservation Minnesota ( “We help you and other Minnesotans protect the lands, lakes, and way of life that we all cherish. We do so by helping Minnesotans evaluate the performance of your elected representatives.”)

Emmer — 13 percent

Kelliher — 88 percent

Legislative Evaluative Assembly (“LEA bases its evaluation on the traditional American principles of
constitutionalism, limited government, free enterprise, legal and moral order with justice and individual liberty and dignity.”)

Emmer — 98 percent (94 percent, career)

Kelliher — 0 percent (13 percent, career)

Minnesota Association of Professional Employees  (“Our issue priorities include: achieving fair compensation for state employees, fixing our broken health care system, preventing outsourcing and privatization of state services and protecting our pension and retirement benefits.)

Emmer — 13 percent

Kelliher — 100 percent

AFL-CIO (These are lifetime ratings through 2008. “The mission of the Minnesota AFL-CIO is to improve the lives of working families—to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our state and the nation.”)

Emmer — 1 percent

Kelliher — 97 percent

Minnesota Chamber of Commerce (“Our voting records represent the most important votes on the issues that impact Minnesota businesses and jobs – they are not intended to endorse or oppose any candidate for office.”)

Emmer — voted with the Chambers position on 10 of 13 issues. He was absent on two votes and voted against the Chambers’ position on one issue.

Kelliher — voted with the Chambers’ position on 2 of 13 issues.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (“MCCL compiles the voting records of lawmakers on key pro-life issues that come before the legislature”)

Emmer — 100 percent

Kelliher — 0 percent

Minnesota Family Council (The Council rates lawmakers on what it considers “pro-family” votes)

Emmer — 90 percent (He was absent for one scored vote.)

Kelliher — 0 percent

NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota (“We highlight the choice votes that occurred during the 2009 legislative session.”)

Emmer — voted against the NARAL position on three out of three issues.

Kelliher — voted with the NARAL position on three out of three issues.

National Federation of Independent Business (These are 2007-2008 ratings. Legislators got high scores if they “supported legislation important to small business.”)

Emmer — 89 percent

Kelliher — 11 percent

Organizing Apprenticeship Project (The project gives its “assessment of the state legislature’s and governor’s efforts to move policies that strengthen opportunity, racial equity and American Indian tribal sovereignty.”)

Emmer — D grade

Kelliher — A grade

Taxpayers League of Minnesota (“The Taxpayers League of Minnesota is a nonpartisan, nonprofit grassroots taxpayer advocacy organization which fights for lower taxes, limited government and full empowerment of taxpaying citizens in accordance with Constitutional principles.”)

Emmer — 100 percent (92 lifetime)

Kelliher — 0 percent (11 percent lifetime)

So which is it?  Is Kelliher an “extremist”, too?  Or are they both merely partisans who get routinely praised and/or slagged by their special-interest friends/enemies?

I can’t honestly say I have a coherent, consistent opinion about Arizona’s immigration law yet.

On the one hand, there can be no more repugnant thought to a citizen of a free society than the idea of police wandering around going “your papers, please?”. 

On the other hand, that’s not what the Arizona law is about.  According to actual lawyer Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci, who actually has some background in Arizona law, and who noted in my comment section yesterday:

Reasonable suspicion, I think, pertains to searches after an arrest has been effected. The example here being: a cop pulls a guy over for speeding and when the perp opens the car door window, pot smoke billows out. The cop then has reasonable suspicion that there may be pot in the car and can search it without a warrant.

That distinction (if I’m correct) is key to the critical language in the blurb you quote from 11-1051, “Lawful contact”. That term is not defined in Arizona Revised Statutes. However, given the context, I think it may mean a search or arrest pursuant to probable cause. Meaning that the mandate for cops to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain a person’s immigration status (based on a “reasonable suspicion” of illegality) only kicks in if the person is stopped or arrsted for the violation of some other law.

That said, if I’m wrong and “lawful contact” means merely a cop ambling up to some browish dude with an accent and saying “hey, how ya’ doin’? Papers please,” then this law is repulsive, and proably unconstitutional.

If my interpretation is correct, then a lot of people are getting their panties in a wad over nothing.

To the best of my knowledge, the Arizona law does not mean law enforcment will be driving down the street rounding up brown-looking people who don’t have IDs on them. 

As many proponents of the Arizona law note, the law just reiterates federal law, as it is supposed to be enforced (but isn’t).  I’m no lawyer.  I don’t know. 

On the third hand, there are a lot of people who dont’ really care if you know the real truth or not.  To our nation’s media and current political elites, disinformation is just fine.  Christina Cordova at  “MNSpeak” is part of the disinformation, whether as a producer, a consumer, or both:

A new Arizona law makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally, and requires local law enforcement to ask for papers from anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally — in other words, anyone that “looks” like they “may” not be… a “white” American. Hmm…

If someone can show me the “racial dragnet” portion of this law, please speak up.

On the third-and-a-half hand, we all know that there are cops who will made their collars first and bother with “reasonable” this and “probable” that later, and pretty much assume that nobody’s got the money to fight City Hall anyway.  And that’s usually a fair bet; I know of not a few situations where the police have trampled over ostensible constitutional rights, knowing that the victims weren’t going to be able to do anything about it on their budgets anyway. 

On the fourth hand, that’s a separate issue.  The fact that some cops give ten miles per hour of leeway over the posted speed limit, and some give none at all, doesn’t invalidate the speed limit law.   We need to keep our cops accountable.

On the fifth hand, more enforcement is only part of the answer to the narcotraficante problem.  The “War On Drugs” is a failure by every possible moral, ethical and practical measure.  We need to end it.

On the sixth hand, until we do end it, we have to deal with the hand we’re dealt.  It’d be far better to keep illegal immigrants on the other side of the border.  Perhaps it’s time to abandon the farce of the “open, unfortified border”, and screw the whole idea of a “fence”, and move the Army down there.

On the seventh hand, barring a major commitment in fence-building or a major redeployment of the Armhy, our border is utterly permeable.  And cops in Arizona – and all along the border – are facing an awful situation.  It’s not just would-be landscapers and fry cooks coming across the border.  Once low-crime Phoenix is awash in narcotraficante crime these days.  Trafficers from across the border are causing all kinds of mayhem, and killing not a few innocent Americans who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And the feds are apparently doing nothing useful, and the mainstream media are pretending there is no story, largely because they ideologically support open borders.  Hey, news anchors need cheap nannies too.

On the eighth hand, the illegal immigration problem predates the drug war in Mexico by quite a bit.  The current drug war and the longstanding illegal immigration problem tie into the fact that Mexico is a failed, socialist state, while the US, so far, isn’t.  The open border has allowed Mexico’s failed socialist government to put off its day of reckoning with its own people.

On the ninth hand, to a big chunk of our nation’s political and media elite, the idea of separating ourselves from a neighbor’s failure – even for both country’s mutual good – is noxious.  America is guilty, they think, for much of the hemisphere’s dysfunction, one way or the other.  The whole “the world is one” conceit isn’t just idle talk to them.

And as part of exercising that conceit, there is an epic slander underway.  It’s of a piece with the slander of all dissent that our political aned media elites are engaged in, in which all dissent on any subject is called “racist”, “violent” and otherwise depraved. 

Part of that campaign is the deliberate blurring of the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.  You will never see a lefty commentator, from Christina Cordova to Chris Coleman, use the word “illegal” immigrant when talking about the subject of the law; they never qualify the term “immigrant”, to the point of lying (Coleman’s little squib yesterday about the law affecting his sainted Irish grandmother, who would no doubt kick his ass if she saw the way he was torturing context; every good Irish Catholic gramma knows a lie by omission is a lie just the same).

On the tenth hand, I know of not one single conservative, anywhere, who actually favors clamping down on legal immigration.  “Build a high fence, and a wide gate”, most of us say. 

On the eleventh hand, the media would rather cover peckerwoods waving shotguns from the backs of their pickup trucks, a la “Reno 911″‘s classic “Minutemen” episode, than the actual facts.

So with eleven hands raised, where does that leave us?

Make sure the law is constitutional – as in, “actually follows the law”, as opposed to “makes my white-liberal-guilty heart droop”.

The Tea Parties rallied to protest, and call attention to, the Obama Administration’s ruinous financial policies (which, to be fare, are in a few instances continuations of Bush-era policies, only accelerated many times over).

The response:  “some of you might get violent!”

Don’t change the subject.  We were talking about the Obama Administration’s ruinous financial policies.

If I’m talking with you, or commenting on your blog, about the the Obama Administration’s ruinous financial policies, and you start babbling about “the avalanche of violence”, I’m not even going to take time out to remind you that every single act of actual, as opposed to threatened, violence this past year has been committed by a leftist of one kind or another.  Every single one.  No exceptions.

No.  I’m just going to tell you “don’t change the subject”.

And if I’m talking with Bill Clinton (unlikely as that may be) about the Obama Administration’s ruinous financial policies, and he starts prattling about Oklahoma City, I will tell him “don’t change the subject”, too.

Changing the subject when you’re backed into a corner in a debate is the mark of a poor debater or a weasel lawyer.

Changing the subject to defame the person who is beating you in an argument – and we are beating you, Democrats, nationwide, and we’re going to beat you like cheap brisket this November – is the mark of the poor debater whose got everyone’s worst interests at heart.

So don’t change the subject.

To:  Betty McCollum

From: Mitch Berg, your unwilling constituent

Re:  You are a tool in the literal sense of the term.

Rep. McCollum:

When Members of Congress compare health care protesters and spending dissidents to ‘mass-murderers,’ ‘militias,’ or ‘extremists’ – in the hopes of scoring political points is like pouring gas on the fire of repression.

The Members of the House, Democrats and Republicans – have a duty and an obligation to end the dangerous name-calling that can only inspire the extremist media and your not-very-bright supporters who keep crashing planes into buildings, shooting professors, and beating people up in the streets.

Put another way, Rep. McCollum – I’m not saying you’re a totalitarian.  I’m just saying that real totalitarians need lots of people like you running society to make their job easier.

That is all.

Well, no, it’s not.  You also said:

“Only last month a Fox News commentator, with Members of Congress next to him, rallied a Tea Party crowd by disparaging Congress and calling the crowd ‘all these Tim McVeigh wannabes here’ to the crowds cheers and applause.

Rep. McCollum:  certainly you – a member of a party who’s leading intellectual light is Jon Stewart – can’t tell me you don’t “get” satire and sarcasm?

“When Members of Congress compare health care legislation to ‘government tyranny,’ ‘socialism,’ or ‘totalitarianism’ – in the hopes of scoring political points is like pouring gas on the fire of extremism.

“The Members of this House Democrats and Republicans – have a duty and an obligation to end the dangerous name-calling that can only inspire the extremist militias and phony patriots.

“In the most free, prosperous and greatest democracy on earth it is time to return to a civil, decent debate of public policy.

“I don’t want another ‘Oklahoma City’ to ever take place again.

Dear Representative Idiot.  You are comparing protesters to mass-murderers.  When it comes to civil debate, you are the problem.

Civil debate will return to Washington when you are chased from office.

And lest you and your idiot enablers in the local leftymedia are still trolling looking for more “extremists”, I mean “chased from office this November”.