It was Friday, July 24th, 1987, and I was stuck in traffic.

Everywhere.  Every road I drove on, whether a freeway or a side street.  And it’d been like that for about the previous 18 hours.

The previous night was supposed to have been a busy one.  I’d signed up for a video production class at Saint Paul Cable Access, and we were having our final shooting session at the Longfellow Community Center, before going downtown for next week’s session to learn how to edit tape. 

Before that, I’d gone over to the band’s practice house and filled up the Jeep with the guys’ gear.  We drove to Fernando’s – a crappy little dive bar at 15th and East Lake Street – and loaded in for a gig that was planned for the evening.  My plan; load in, go to class, leave class at the crack of 9PM and race over to ‘nando’s for the gig. 

As we stood outside the community center, black clouds roiled in the west.  Someone flipped on The Good Neighbor, and heard reports of tornados in Maple Grove – an impossibly distant ‘burb to me, at that time – and warnings being tossed about for the rest of the metro. 

Class let out early due to the weather.  As the first drops started dribbling down from the darkening sky, I rolled over to Cretin Avenue, intending to jump onto 94 and whip over to Minneapolis, getting to the gig a little early.

The weather had a legendary change of plan for an awful lot of us who were in the Cities that night, of course.  “The Storm”, along with the “Halloween Blizzard”, is one of those two-word icons that everyone who’s lived in the Twin Cities in the past couple of decades remembers and has in common.

Me?  Well…

As I rolled past the Highway 280 exit, the sky closed in.  Roiling cumulus clouds resembling gray grapes advanced overhead, until they were blotted out by the most intense cloudburst I’ve ever experienced, whipped by a fearsome wind.  In moments, I could barely see the car in front of me; just their tail lights.  Stopped.  Cold. 

It was then that I discovered that the rag top on my jeep had a leak.  A couple of them, in fact.  A steady stream of water poured down on my head, as I scannned for a break in the traffic that never came.  Another leak coursed water into the back seat, and I silently thanked God that I’d left my guitar with the guys. 

It’s hard to remember, 20 years later, exactly what happened.  I know that I sat, soaking, in the jeep from about 8-ish until maybe 10, wondering (in those pre-cell-phone days) if the gig was going to go ahead or not, gradually giving up on being anything like dry.  I kept the radio on WCCO, which spoke of torrential downpours (duh) and flooded roads (ibid) and calls from people talking about wind and water damage all over the metro – but no word about I-94 Westbound through Saint Paul.

Eventually – it had to be close to 10PM – I saw people walking in the downpour around up ahead.  Hours after the storm started, the rain was still a cold, drenching cataract, and the wind, while it’d died off a bit, whipped it into my face as I climbed out of the Jeep’s meager shelter – but by this point, I was more interested in information, even rumors, than the dubious comfort of my ragtop.

I walked a couple of cars ahead to a group of guys, a couple of whom had come back from farther west along the freeway.  “I heard that the road is flooded four or six feet deep at the U of M Exit” said one of the guys, soaked to the bone like all the rest of us.  “There’s cars stuck in there.  We aren’t going anywhere”. 

I walked back along the line to pass the word to the people climbing out of cars – or gingerly opening windows – farther back along the freeway.  I kept checking west along the road to see if the endless stream of red taillights were moving even the slightest.  Not a bit. 

So I kept walking.  I probably went a quarter-mile east, from car to car, spreading the “news”, watching for changes, seeing nothing.  My clothes – an army-surplus olive-drab shirt over a “Clash” T-shirt, black jeans, cheap sneakers – were soaked and soaked again. 

And still, nothing moved.

It was probably around 11, and probably 5-600 yards from my car, when I ran into a familiar face; a medium-height, husky guy with curly red hair who looked like a young Gordon Lightfoot.  I recognized him as a floor director at KSTP-TV; we’d run into each other at a few Hubbard Broadcasting events and one time when I’d gone to a taping of the loathsome Twin Cities Live With Bob Bruce.  We could see Highway 280 from the small rise where we stood, exchanging weary, sopping pleasantries. 

“Hey”, he said, a sopping light flashing above his head, “nothing’s moving on 280.  We can start people going back that way…”

We – “Gordon” and two other guys and I – jogged through the slop, back to the 280 ramp to 94, to start talking to drivers, getting them to turn around and head back, the wrong way, up the freeway to the exit to (actually the on-ramp from) University Avenue.  A cop was at the top of the onramp, keeping people from going onto the freeway, so the “plan” was falling into place.

Car by car, the four of us knocked on peoples’ windows, and got them to start turning around and, counterintuitively, driving the wrong way up the freeway.  It’s been twenty years, so I don’t know if it took me half an hour or two hours to get back to my jeep – but when I did, I climbed in, sat with an irrelevant “splorch” on the sopping seat, and got turned around. 

It was somewhere between 11 and midnight when I got off the freeway.  The rain was only letting up a bit.  University Avenue was dotted with small floods, where overtaxes storm drains gave up the ghost.  I pulled over at a gas station and ran to a pay phone to call Fernando’s; the first good news of the night was that the gig had been cancelled when the roof started leaking all over the stage and the audience. 

My guitar was the only dry thing in my life by this point.

It was after midnight when I finally picked my way home, changed into dry clothes, and flopped into bed.

The next day – Friday the 24th – I had an appointment for some freelance work in Eden Prairie at 9AM.  I got on the road at 7. 

By 9, I’d made it to the Minneapolis border, and had called and rescheduled the appointment; they told me that I494 was still flooded and impassible, and if I made it at all it’d be a miracle.

By the grace of God and Jeep and a decent memory of South Minneapolis’ back streets, I made it.  At noon.  It took me until after 5PM to get home. 

But if you were there, you probably had about the same kind of time.

———-

Apropos not much, the KSTP-TV floor director who led the evening’s amateur traffic-coppery eventually became known to the Cities as Rusty Gatenby, who got promoted off the floor and started his long career as Channel Five’s Traffic and Entertainment reporter not long after that, as I recall. 

Lee Helgen is a DFL City Councilman who represents Saint Paul’s North End. 

Among the whole crowd of DFL sinecures up for election this fall, Helgen’s seat is probably going to be the most interesting race. 

We’ve encountered Helgen before – his involvement in the controversial teardown of the house at 14 East Jessamine last year (I covered it here and here) is still fresh in many minds.  Rumors around Saint Paul hint of other stories that haven’t broken yet.

And then there’s this:

MGM [Liquor Warehouse] owns two residential homes on the southern part of the block [at the southwest corner of Larpenteur and Lexington], leading to speculation that expansion into the quiet neighborhood north of Como Park is imminent — something many neighbors oppose.

But the meeting really got interesting when Billy Dinkel, a District 10 board member and exec at the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, pointed out that MGM honchos were pouring money into Helgen’s reelection campaign.

Helgen said he thought Dinkel was out of line bringing politics into the MGM discussion, and decided to tell him so after it was over.

“I took a step to him and said, ‘That’s not right. This is a community meeting,’” Helgen said.

Dinkel said the campaign donations were relevant to the discussion, and defended the move. “It was a legitimate issue. It gives the illusion. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong, but it gives the illusion,” Dinkel said.

Exactly how heated it got is conjecture, but by all accounts the two men were nose-to-nose. At one point, Dinkel told Helgen “Go ahead and do it,” or something along those lines.

That’s when David Haas stepped between the two men. But if they really wanted a piece of each other, the 5’11” Hass couldn’t have stopped them — Helgen stands 6’4” and weighs 250, while Dinkel checks in at 6’2” and 225.

Helgen said he felt like Dinkel disrespected him by raising the issue.

“I don’t mind having heated political discussions with people, but as an elected official I’m entitled to some respect,” Helgen said.

(Incidentally, Councilmember Jay Benanav also told us he felt disrespected by Dinkel at a recent District 10 meeting. Then again, St. Paulites have never really put their politicians on a throne.)

(I think I’m liking this Dinkel guy more and more)

Dinkel, however, said he feels like the victim.

“I did not do one thing to instigate that,” Dinkel said. “It frustrates me to no end that he did this thing to me.”

It’s going to be an interesting race.

Saint Paulicy covers the brouhaha and ties it to some other Helgiana.

I’ve been pretty religious about biking to work every day this past four or five weeks; I only missed a couple days when my bike was in the shop.  Not bad, all in all.

And I got some positive reinforcement; a third party with no attachment to me whatsoever commented “Looks like you’ve lost some weight” over the weekend.  So – so far, so good.  I feel much better after the ride every morning; biking to work is a natural lift to the day.  Part of it is just the blast of exercise.  Part of it is the adrenaline from the existential threat from some of the drivers out there.  Either way, it focuses the mind.

But I have to wonder about something.

I’ve noticed that there seem to be four types of bikers on the road in the morning.

1. The serious bikers; the ones in the yellow jerseys and biker shorts and streamlined helmets, with legs like tree trunks – kinda like mine were, when I was a serious biker, between about 1980 and 1990.  Most of them are visibly serious about their biking (kinda like I was); focuses, concentrated, and very, very fast.  Some of them boggle the mind; one guy sailed past me a few weeks back on an oval bike – a single speed bike with no coaster gear on it, meaning you have to pedal all the freaking time when you’re on it, and you can’t change gears on hills.  I’m in awe.
2. Guys you can pretty much tell are there because they got their third DWI.  They’re usually dressed like they dress at work – work boots, jeans, coveralls, whatever.
3. Bikers like me; guys and gals in workout duds grinding out the commute to work, or grabbing a morning jaunt before heading into the office.  I wear pretty much what I wear to the gym; whatever T-shirt I was wearing the day before, my gym shorts, my sneakers.  I put my work clothes in a backpack (my christmas present to myself will probably be a rear rack of some kind), and take a shower in my office’s locker room before going to work because I figure even my little six mile commute is gonna make me sweaty.  And who needs that?
4. Bikers like the guy I drafted for a while this morning.  Let me explain.

The guy was fiftysomething, with a neatly-trimmed gray beard, he wore a helmet, a dress shirt, khaki Dockers, black socks and loafers – in other words, dressed for work at an office job.  He carried a shoulder bag that looked like it was full of notebooks, not clothes.

Now, it was pleasant this morning, but kinda muggy.  I was sweating; I’ll chalk a lot of that up to the fact that I’m still a ways away from being in shape, but I also have a pretty solid rhythm (one of the keys to distance biking is just getting your legs in a rhythm and keeping it, not stopping for anything, even coasting as little as possible; the cooling down of your muscles actually causes more fatigue than keeping your legs moving.  And yes, I realize the absurdity of calling my six-mile commute “distance biking”, but then you try it when you’re 44 and haven’t biked seriously since 1990.  But I digress), so I don’t waste a lot of energy, either.  This guy was working up a bit of a lather, too; decent rhythm, but he was standing on his pedals up hills and out of stoplights, which tends to exert one.

I have to wonder – how do these people get through the workday without smelling like a bear that’s just come out of hibernation?

I noticed that the guy this morning – like many of the guys I see who bike to work in their work duds – pulled into a government building at the end of his ride.  Government employees, please spill the beans – do your offices reek, or what?

After having a great interview with him on Saturday’s NARN broadcast, I’m remiss in not posting a link to NZ Bear’s relaunched Victory Caucus website. 

So go read it.

Kathy relates 100 Star Wars lines that’d be better with pants.

I’ve beat around the bush for years.

I finally have to ask.

Read Sunday’s piece by Lori Sturdevant, and tell me – does she get her checks directly from the DFL?

Her column has never served as anything but free DFL propaganda. 

Shouldn’t her columns be labelled “advertising?”

This controversy heaps weird upon weird; Tom Cruise has been cast to play Claus Von Stauffenberg, who :

German officials have baulked at the choice of Cruise to play Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who was executed by firing squad in 1944 after the failed assassination attempt.

They cite the actor’s ties to the Church of Scientology, which is viewed here as a “totalitarian” group that exploits vulnerable people, as making him unfit to play a German martyr.

Cruise is an odd choice.  I was afraid they were going to cast Dane Cook.

My daughter, Bun, would like to make the following statement:

Dane Cook is awesome.  And Dog the Bounty Hunter is totally Dr. Phil with mace (and O’Doyle rules, for all those Billy Madison fans)

That is all.

Words fail me.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

Words?

Yep.  They still fail me. 

Today on the NARN:

• NARN I is on the air now, with John, Brian and Chad.  Well, at least two of the three.  I haven’t been downstairs yet.
• Ed and I with Volume II after that.  We’ll be talking with NZ Bear about the relaunched Victory Caucus page.  It’s gonna be fun.
• Voluime III, “The Final Word”, with Michael and King, wraps it up at 3PM.

Join us! 

I left this comment at the Monitor, in Andy Birkey’s thread in which he claims that, since there are Republicans who commit domestic abuse or patronize hookers, the party should regarded “with suspicion” on gay marriage:

So Since Perfection Is The Standard…

…you’re set, Andy – because remember, you’re impugning the entire GOP‘s policy on gay marriage, all millions of us, all of the thousands of elected Republican officials, because of the actions of two Minnesota and one national Republicans, let’s hold you, Andy, to the standard you’ve set for us (and, while we’re on the subject, me):Three weeks ago, some of us caught Jeff Fecke committing a slew of, at the very least, ,journalistic gaffes:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Someone else found something.

He’d seem to be, at the very least, guilty of extremely slipshod basic journalism, and possibly plagiarism.By your own logic, Andy, the reader should regard all of you MNMon reporters with suspicion because of Fecke’s trasgressions.  The GOP wants the people to trust them on social policy; the Monitor wants people to trust them on news.  The only real difference; about .0001% of Republicans have been accused of domestic abuse or caught with their phone numbers in a hooker’s phone book, behavior that 99.999% of Republicans condemn. 

In the meantime, 16% of Minnesota Monitor reporters have been alleged to be slipshod reporters and/or plagiarists.  And since the Minnesota Monitor, breaking its own “Code of Ethics”, has neither publcly acknowledge nor corrected these “mistakes”, it implies that 100% of the Monitor approves.

So do you have different moral standards on different issues? 

Or do you perhaps see where maybe the point of your article is logically void?

Read both bits.  Place your bets.

Any state legislator that has ever bounced a check should be disqualified from budget debates. 

Any solon that has ever gotten a speeding ticket should be disqualified from speaking about crime. 

Any elected official that has gotten less than a “C” in a class, ever, should be barred from debate on education.

Absurd, right?

Not if you’re a kept leftyblogger, apparently.

Let’s back up a bit.

Gay marriage, to me, is not the most important issue on the public plate right now.

Oh, make no mistake – I think “marriage” should be a purely religious institution, and that the state’s only interest in a perfect world would be that of enforcing a civil contract.  Hence, I think that civil unions, as a contractual entity, should be legal.  For that matter, I think that any church or religious body that can theologically justify “marriage” between people of the same sex should be able to do it (although suffice to say that I’ll have an interesting time debating that bit of instatheology).

I believe this because, while I think there’s a legitimate case to be made for same-sex civil unions, there is none I can see for gay marriage. 

But since I, myself, am divorced, apparently according to kept leftyblogger Andy Birkey, I should just shut up and let everyone who’s never held out an opinion about what marriage should be about.

In this piece, Birkey takes the crimes, found and alleged, of three Republican legislators (two in Minnesota, one national)…

…and says:

These “pro-family” failures demonstrate that we should be suspicious when politicians try to legislate rigid traditional standards on people’s private romantic lives, because chances are, they won’t be able to live up to the expectations they set for the rest of us.

Get that?

Out of millions of Republicans, and dozens of GOP legislators in this state, the failures of two people invalidate the entire case against same sex marriage? 

Wow.

Since the Democrat majority leader got pulled over for Drunk Driving after the last session, the DFL should be ignored on public safety issues?

So since a number of prominent DFLers supported Kathleen Soliah, we should ignore the DFL on terrorism and crime issues?

Because of William Jefferson, Democrats should shut up about corruption?

Because Jeff Fecke has never admitted to cribbing AP quotes, we should ignore everything the Minnesota Monitor says?

(That last may be a bad example).

What bloggers do to the mainstream media – fact-check them, hold them accountable – some commenters in turn do to bloggers.

My long-time regular commenter Master of None has taken a particular interest in the Minnesota Monitor’s financing.  He (along with Learned Foot) has, apparently, expertise to match interest in the field, as he noted (several times)in the comments to this post, about the Monitor’s dilatory sense of self-accountability:

There is fairly compelling evidence that the Center for Independent Media is organized as a 501(c)(3) public charity. The CIM pays stipends to all of the MiniMoni bloggers, and requires them to write not only for MiniMoni, but to also publish their own blogs.

IRS rules for 501(c)(3) bars them from being active in politics, with pretty precise guidelines for what is permitted and what is not permitted. It seems like these rules should apply to not only MiniMoni, but also to the blogs that are operated by the CIM fellows.

Do you know any Tax lawyers in MOB that might be able to comment on this?

Learned Foot at KAR continued, digging into the tax status of the Center for Independent Media and one of its major benefactors:

Well, wonder no longer! While MinnMon and CIM aren’t forthcoming about their sources of income, at least we now know where $100,000 of it came from:

$100,000 to the Center for Independent Media. This grant will support the Center’s efforts to strengthen its New Journalist Program by establishing a national branch in Washington, DC. The fellowship program, with operations currently in Colorado, Minnesota and Iowa, mentors and trains state-based political news bloggers in investigative reporting with the aim of creating a robust corps of citizen journalists to add diversity and local expertise to media coverage of important issues. Fellows serving in the New Journalist Washington DC Program will focus their coverage on Congress, federal agencies, the presidency, Supreme Court and the influence of lobbying, the national press corps and campaign finance.

From the Sunlight Foundation! And what is the Sunlight Foundation’s raison d’etre?

Transparency! In government!

We’ve noted this in the past.  What I haven’t done, so far, is note what “Master of None” did in the comment above:  non-profit organizations incorporated under 501c3 status have rules to follow when it comes to political partisanship, rules that 527 status doesn’t have.

The battle has moved to the Monitor’s comment section, where Master asks:

So Robin, is CIM a 501(c)(3) or not?

You’re getting plenty of money from 501(c)(3)  public charities.  Do you really think it’s appropriate to run a leftwing blog site using tax exempt charitable donations?  Don’t you think the Red Cross or perhaps United Way could make better use of that kind of money?

As with the prior questions of the Monitor – on the whole plagiarism issue, for example – the Monitor remains officially silent.

A request to the Center for Independent Media asking their non-profit incorporation status remains unanswered.

Joel Rosenberg on the latest in the Treptow case – the June 7 incident in Coon Rapids where a citizen with a carry permit shot a road-raging driver who (allegedly) pointed a gun at his wife, and later turned out to be an undercover cop:

The only real news, such as it is, is a rumor.  (I think it’s likely true, mind you, but it is rumor, at the moment; I’m working to get a source on deep background or better).  Seems that Officer Friendly [Joel’s pseudonym for the officer] has been kicked off the state Drug Task Force, and is back at Robbinsdale, working as an “investigator.”  He’s not a detective — not that there’s anything wrong with that; the title “patrolman” is an honorable one, and many terrific cops spend their entire career in that rank — but has been assigned as an undercover “investigator” to keep his name and his records from becoming public.  (Under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, if a cop is on anything but an undercover assignment, his name, his shift information, disciplinary information, etc., becomes public data.  While he’s on undercover status, it isn’t.)

Interesting.  Hypothetically, if a police chief were to be assigning a cop to an “undercover” role inspecting the break room to see if any of the doughtnuts have escaped, what would be the proper way to fix that? After all, the purpose of the exclusions in the MGDPA aren’t to give political cover from embarrassment to police officials. 

Rumors – all unconfirmed, all exactly that, rumors – indicate the officer might have a bit of a history of being a little boisterous. 

As to his police career, it’s been cooked.  He’ll never testify as a prosecution witness; it would be child’s play for a defense attorney to destroy his credibility on the stand with the events around June 7. 

But this can’t stand.  As one three-decade retired veteran of the MPD recently said, it’s important that bad cops be exposed and disciplined, or the stink rubs off on all. 

 And in a metro area whose crime problems are, in some areas, becoming out of control, maintaining confidence among the citizenry is important.

Meanwhile, from the Anoka County Attorney’s office — the office which will prosecute Officer Friendly for his actions on June 7, if anybody does — what have we heard?

Silence.

That can’t last long.

I’m going to start a new non-profit.  With help from my anonymous donors, I’m going to defend leftybloggers from people who attack their own logical, rhetorical and ethical lapses. I’ll call myself a “Citizen Advocate”.  I’ll even publish a Code of Ethics.  To wit:

1. I will defend leftybloggers to the best of my ability against having their rhetorical, logical and ethical flubs dissected
2. If I screw up, I’ll admit my failure
3. I’ll be honest about my motivations, so people can judge for themselves my credibility.  I won’t try to pass myself off as something I’m not. 

There.  I should be legal now.  Onward and upward.

The other day, Learned Foot started digging into one of Minnesota Monitor’s financiers. 

Yesterday, a fella named Bretton Jones, writing for a blog called “Minneapolitics”, swung at Foot’s fastball like Stevie Wonder going for a Johann Santana slider at 3-2…

…ooops, sorry.  I forgot Rule 1 of my Code of Ethics.  Let’s try again. 

Bretton “Mister” Jones “And Me” took a mighty thwack at Foot’s piece:

Let’s go a’ dissecting shall we?

“But we rip mostly because they are a paid propaganda arm of the Democratian Party (not in actuality, but de facto), who try to sell themselves off as a legitimate news source.”

What is the Kool Aid Report a de facto propaganda arm of?

Mr. Jones, are we sure we’re clear on the concept?

Learned Foot is clear about the fact that he’s a satire-oriented “Thunderjournalist” with explicit biases.  He has never passed himself off as a journalist (although when he puts on his “researcher” cap – he’s a lawyer, after all – he routinely shreds the Monitor, the Strib and other purported “journalistic” outlets). 

The Monitor, however, does try to pass itself off as “journalists”, albeit “progressive” ones.  The goal seems to be to present something passing as “news” to the audience.  Foot is merely showing that audience – those who don’t already know, anyway – the funding that motivates their biases.

It’s called “transparency”.   

 Next they pull from another blog [Mine, as it happens.  Mr. Jones apparently doesn’t know how to link].

“We conservative bloggers give the Minnesota Monitor a hard time. As has been amply observed by many local center-right bloggers, the MinMon is supported by the “Center for Independent Media”, which until fairly recently shared offices with “Media Matters for America”.

So this guy has proven that there were people at MM4A that had an idea to form an org to give grants to media orgs to create solid citizen and/or advocacy-oriented journalism.

Um, no, Brandon, and that’s really not the point.  OF COURSE I haven’t “proven” anything – although the fact that they shared office space certainly lends the appearance of a connection, something the reader should be aware of – but the point is, we dont’ know where their funding comes from.  If they want to pass themselves off as “journalists”, bully for them, but unless they’re open about disclosing the hand that jerks their leashes, someone needs to find it out for the audience.  

Then he drops the SOROS-BOMB. Watch much Bill O’Reilly, fella?

Actually, no.  Never have.  Go back to Talking Point Central and get a new cliche!

And citing Soros in caps may pass for cutesy among the “truthiness-based community”, but that pesky fact of the Center for Independent Media’s old connection to Soros-funded Media Matters just keeps rearing its head.  

Mr. Jones returns to citing me:

“The Center for Independent Media pays a group of local bloggers a fairly fat stipend, by blogging standards, to write for the Minnesota Monitor. One must, on the surface, give the CIM and the Monitor some points for at least trying to put up a good appearance; they bandy their “Code of Ethics” about with giggly abandon.”

Now compare what MN MON and CIM do to what Fox News is and ask yourself which is a greater affront to reality.

While the Fox News reference is a strawman, and a dumb one at that, to be fair I did expect a Halliburton reference.  Point for Mr. Jones.

Everyone knows not only Fox’s purported orientation, but the sources of its funding.  It’s a publicly-held corporation.  Rupert Murdoch is among the most public people in the world.  There is no mystery. 

On the other hand, the Monitor would have the uninformed reader (what other kind of liberal reader is there?) that they are an organic, independent body that owes no fealty above the Center for Independent Media.  Foot, and the rest of us, are showing that it’s simply not true.

Which doesn’t bear on their right to present their product, their way.  We’re just making sure the full story is available to the reader (since the Monitor damn sure won’t).   

 Sure MN MON exists to push a certain values-laden agenda. So do I. Is this some big f-ing secret? No. This Thursday I will be doing video coverage at Fair Vote MN’s Fund Raising Party to promote IRV in St Paul. Whether or not I’ve (not yet) recieved funding from the CIM wouldn’t be an issue either way. I do it cuz I love it and like meeting cool new people. If I got paid, whatever.

“I think it’s fair to say that some of their “journalists” make a game effort to try to meet that “code”; an examination of Minnesota Monitor’s coverage shows that the “code” gets ignored when convenient. And while questions have been raised about CIM’s funding, they’ve never revealed anything – although the phrase “liberals with deep pockets” has slipped out in informal conversation.”

Got any examples? Didn’t think so.

Um, Mr. Jones?  I shouldn’t have to babysit your narrative for you, but I’ll show you some mercy.  Your post – the one I’m fisking at this moment – started with an example from Learned Foot.  A minor, but I might suggest important point.   You following me?

Didn’t think so…

DAMN!  I just realized – I’ve breached my Code of Ethics again!  Where I set out to defend Mr. Jones, I’ve lapsed into attacking him!

OK.  Cleansing breath.  Back on task.

The rest of the article is mostly the author, who doesn’t use their real name, blathering about various grants given out by the Sunlight Foundation to promote transparency and ethics, used in “quotes” of course, while never once pointing out a contradicting act on behalf of one of the organizations. I hope they’re not trying to sound all revealing and suggestive, cuz all I see are facts.

Right.  That was Foot’s point. Facts.  Facts that it’d be useful for the otherwise-uninformed reader – the only kind the Monitor would seem to have, except for those of us who read it for fisking material or for gross, unacknowledged journalistic gaffes (at best; at worst, systematic violations of intellectual property rules) to know when assessing this partisan organ’s credibility.

In the end this guy’s just pissed off cuz nobody gave him any money.

I’ll hand it to you, Bretton “Mister” Jones:  what you lack as a writer, you make up for as a clairvoyant.

No, I’m lying.  You don’t.

And…crap…I see that I’ve wandered away from my mission as a Citizen Advocate again.  I’ve trashed my “Code of Ethics”…

…or not.   Depending on who funded me in the first place.

Wouldn’t you like to know who!

(more…)

Someone sent me this, the other day:

The Salvation Army AAA@BBB.CCC wrote: From: “The Salvation
Army” <AAA@BBB.CCC>
To: XXX@YYY.ZZZ
Date: 18 Jul 2007 14:01:07 -0400
Subject: Summer Volunteer Opportunities

    Volunteer Opportunities     
   Salvation Army Summer Volunteer Opportunities
     ____________________________________________________
         Disaster Actor
The Minnesota National Guard needs volunteers to simulate a large
scale disaster for training purposes.  As a disaster actor, you will be
given a story to act out and some make-up to go with the part, then youll
be saved from the rubble, washed down in decontamination, and bandaged
up.  Individuals and groups are welcome as some shifts require 100
volunteers!
Dates: August 21  25
Times: Shifts are 8 a.m.  1 p.m. and Noon  5 p.m.
Location: Minneapolis National Guard Armory.  Volunteers will be bused
from this location to the training site.

That actually sounds like fun, and I might see if I can do that.

Which brings up a question:  you know the guys who play the terrorists, armed robbers and so forth for police and military simulations?

Where do they find volunteers for that?  Because that sounds like fun.

Via Brodkorb, the Holocaust Museum condemns Rep. Ellison’s “Reichstag Fire” gaffe:

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum also issued a statement Tuesday, saying: “Nazi Germany committed unprecedented crimes against Europe’s Jews and others. Invoking the Holocaust to make a point about the United States is unfounded, minimizes the evil of Nazism, and is an offense to its victims.”

But what would they know about Nazis, right?

Abe Foxman piles on:

“Whatever his views may be on the administration’s response to 9/11 and the conduct of the war on terrorism, likening it to Hitler’s rise to power and Nazism is odious and demeans the victims of 9/11 and the brave American men and women engaged in the war on terror,” Foxman said. “Furthermore, it demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about the horrors that Hitler and his Nazi regime perpetrated.”

I’d say “make sure plenty of signs with this gaffe are printed and distributed in ’08”, but frankly I think Ellison could advocate another Holocaust and he’d still get re-elected in the 5th CD.

I’d actually like to interview Rep. Ellison about this.

I wonder what the odds are?

On few issues do I get as much crap from fellow conservatives as my stance on the Death Penalty.

I support the death penalty for every possible reason, except one; the likelihood of executing the innocent.  And that, as it happens, is dispositive to me.  Since an equally-safe-to-the-public method – life in Supermax – exists, there is no moral reason to use the death penalty until such a time as humans are very nearly perfect.

And as Flash shows in the latest of the over fifty cases such cases that have cropped up since the return of the Death Penalty in 1977, we’re nowhere close to perfect yet, citing a WaPo article on a stay of execution in the case of Troy Davis, who was scheduled to die…today.

Oops.  That coulda been embarassing:

The prosecution’s case against Davis, 38, has crumbled in the 16 years since he was sentenced to death for shooting a police officer working a security detail in Savannah. Most of the key witnesses in Davis’s trial have recanted their testimony, and some have said they lied under police pressure.

Given that Death Row is no more secure than Supermax, what precisely does the public lose by demanding “perfection” – guilt beyond a rational doubt – in such cases?  Or abolishing capital punishment altogether?

Rachel Blount has the vapors over Dirk Boogard’s Fight Camp:

It’s all about the kids. At least, it’s all about the $40 the young’uns pay to get a T-shirt splashed with fake blood and watch a videotape of Boogaard’s most ferocious beatdowns. The big guy seems to have a gift for entrepreneurship, but he’s going to have to work on his debate skills to sell this dubious venture to a sporting public weary of unchecked violence in its games.

“That is awfully young to even know the ugly side of the game,” said Dr. Aynsley Smith, a sports psychologist and researcher at the Mayo Clinic’s Sports Medicine Center. “It’s counterproductive to the direction we’re trying to go as we try to grow the game among kids [in Minnesota].”

Anyone who has spent enough time in an ice rink to get cold has heard the logic-bending arguments of the blood-hockey crowd. Skilled players need protection from physical opponents. Eliminating fighting would lead to more high-sticking and other dangerous behavior. Fisticuffs provide a necessary outlet in a physically rough game.

Now, ordinarily I wouldn’t care, since hockey is more boring than NASCAR racing.

But I’m thinking a Patriot Forum featuring a point-counterpoint between Blount, and, say, Elder or JB.

In April, 1985, my college stage band went on its spring trip. 

I played guitar on the jazz stuff (and percussion on the classical stuff), which was a fun stretch for me, since I’d not had a huge jazz background.  Spring tour was usually a 2-3 day jaunt, playing 2-3 gigs a day at rural high schools in the Dakotas and, once, rural Manitoba. 

But in ’85 – my senior year – the band’s director had a serious case of short-timer’s syndrome.  A college music teacher since he’d graduated himself, 13 years earlier, he was burning out on the long hours and short pay at our tiny college; he’d spent the previous couple of years getting a BA in Computer Science in his off-hours.  So instead of organizing a gruelling working tour, he took his tour budget and splurged on taking the band to Minneapolis to see the Dave Brubek Quartet at the Northrup Auditorium (and, unbeknownst to us, interview at Sperry/Univac in Roseville, for a programming job he got and started shortly after I graduated). 

Anyway.

The host of the evening with Brubek was an MPR host named – and I’m not kidding when I say this – “Lake Hammond”.  I thought it made sense as an air name for a Minnesota radio personality.  

It’s sad to see Leigh Kaman is retiring after 400 years in Twin Cities radio…

(Idiot that I am, it took me years before I realized his name wasn’t Lake Hammond.)

…and interesting to see I’m not the only one who woofed Kaman’s name, at first.

(I, myself, didn’t learn his real name until a year or so later, when I’d moved to the Cities and did a bit on the Don Vogel show spoofing Kaman’s psychedelic delivery)

We – local center-right bloggers – spend a lot of time beating on the Minnesota Monitor, the local group leftyblog funded by a variety of liberals with deep pockets.

Part of it, of course, is the extremely shoddy level of “Journalism” that some of their “citizen journalists” – who were, at last report, paid $1,500 a month for their efforts, a princely sum in the world of blogs – exhibit, as well as their seeming unwillingness to follow their own “Code of Ethics” – itself a matter of longstanding derision.

But at the end of the day, it’s all about following the money. Minnesota Monitor is funded by a group called the Center for Independent Media, a group that started life sharing offices with the George Soros-funded attack-PR firm “Media Matters for America”. They initially denied any connection (and the CIM eventually relocated its offices) – but the Monitor and the CIM has been pretty mum about its funding.

Which doesn’t mean the truth isn’t out there somewhere.

Learned Foot at KAR has been doing some digging:

Well, wonder no longer! While MinnMon and CIM aren’t forthcoming about their sources of income, at least we now know where $100,000 of it came from:

$100,000 to the Center for Independent Media. This grant will support the Center’s efforts to strengthen its New Journalist Program by establishing a national branch in Washington, DC. The fellowship program, with operations currently in Colorado, Minnesota and Iowa, mentors and trains state-based political news bloggers in investigative reporting with the aim of creating a robust corps of citizen journalists to add diversity and local expertise to media coverage of important issues. Fellows serving in the New Journalist Washington DC Program will focus their coverage on Congress, federal agencies, the presidency, Supreme Court and the influence of lobbying, the national press corps and campaign finance.

From the Sunlight Foundation! And what is the Sunlight Foundation’s raison d’etre?

Transparency! In government!

If a website actively rejects transparancy in the woods and nobody hears them…

…no, wait. Foot is fixing that.

And I don’t think he’s done yet.

UPDATE:  Either is Jeff “El Jeffe” Kouba, who’s dug a little further still.

Taking a day off from work today.  Blogging will be relatively light until later.

In the wake of Rep. Ellison’s “Reichstag Fire” smear, Brodkorb notes that making Nazi analogies – or even calling them “Nazis” – is becoming pretty standard practice among DFLers.

He has a list:

• The Minnesota DFL distributed “Bush/Cheney — Most hated world leaders since Hitler” bumper stickers in 2004.

• The SD 42 DFL website once called the SD 42 Republicans “Goebbelesque” and contained the following message: “They’re so SENSITIVE to being called Nazis, but if the boot fits . . .” The Nazi reference was later removed.

• Former State Senator Steve Kelley, the DFL-endorsed candidate for attorney general in 2006, once “compared a Pledge of Allegiance requirement to the rituals of Nazi Germany.“

• Former State Senator Becky Lourey, a DFL candidate for governor in 2006, compared DOMAgate to the Nazi persecution of Jews. 

This, in particular – Lourey comparing legal wrangling over the legal definition of marriage to loading gays into boxcars and pushing them into the gas chambers – was sign of a deeper pathology.

• Coleen Rowley’s campaign blog published a picture of Congressman John Kline, a decorated U.S. Marine, dressed in a Nazi uniform.

Civility for we, but not for ye, apparently.

I made it to the MOB party last night – fashionably late, for a change!

These things are always a dizzying melange.  I always meet scads of interesting people.  Where to start? 

• Met JRoosh from Roosh Five, one of my favorite newer MOB blogs, who had his own account of the evening.
• Most of the TvM crew was there – Gary, the Ringer (fully recovered from his car accident, or so it seemed), and of course Jeff Kouba, whom I believe I met for the first time. 
• The Lady Logician and the Logical Husband. 
• Neal (Neil?) Krasnoff from Loyal Opposition.
• Ben from Hammerschwing, who, I learned, is in seminary.
• John from Policy Guy, who, last I saw, was hanging out with Erik “the Transit Geek” Hare. 
• Wog from Wog’s Blog, who’s counting down toward a liver transplant one of these days.
• Lileks and the Giant Swede.
• The whole crew from Freedom Dogs – Derek, Lassie, Guy, Jonez and Pinkmon Diamond Dog
• Brad Carlson and his wife Jennifer, who took plenty o’pictures
• An ailing but ebullient Joe Tucci
• Night Writer – really the First Familiy of Minnesota blogging, with Mall Diva, Tiger Lilly, and their small crowd of devotees.  The Writer had an account of the evening, by the way, including a photo of me, captioned: “The Reverend Mother spent part of the evening eavesdropping on Mitch Berg. “He’s really interesting,” she said. “Is there anything he doesn’t have an opinion on?” [Hm – come to think if it, probably not…] If so, we haven’t found it. I do know he likes Springsteen [ well, yeah] and, along with Strommie, the Mall Diva [Oh, Writer – I’m so not like Strom…].
• Anti-Strib Tracy and his vastly better half.
• Much less of Speed Gibson than I remember – congrats!
• My neighbor John, from Crazy But Able (whom I’d nearly run down on my bike on Friday while he was walking with his wife and baby around Como) who captured the event with a lot of photos – which are, amazingly, very good. 
• My other neighbor, Flash, from Centrisity
• Dan, the Northern Alliance Wannabe
• King
• Michael
• Bob Davis and Sarah Janecek over at the radio table.
• AAA and…Carrie?  Keri?  Caray?  Anyway, Andy bought me a drink, so there’ll be nothing but favorable reviews of his presence.  Andy reviewed the event, throwing down on the mostly-absent Fraters…
• …who did, in fact, send Atomizer and the Atomizerette to represent.
• Eva Young, who does a lot less name-calling in person than on her blogs.
• Joel and Mrs. Rossennbeerrgg Rosenberg.
• Doug was there, too…

I know I’m missing some.  Cue me in!

And I can hardly wait for the next one!

UPDATE:  Gotcha, Joel.  Got Doug Bass, too.

Of course, I need to shout out to the ones everyone missed; Katie from Yucky Salad, Cathy from the Wright, Jordan and Mark, the Fraters, the Powerguys, Swiftee, Yossarian, Doug Williams, Steve Gigl, Jay Reding…

But it’s summer.  We’re happy anyone at all takes such a gorgeous evening and comes out.

Lassie from Freedom Dogs went to Keith Ellison’s town hall forum on “credit justice”.

Don’t get me wrong; people need to get a lot smarter about credit.  I was one of them, and I’m still paying for it (and I didn’t get bit too bad, and am almost done). 

Lassie relates a story by a woman who, as it was stated, had it far worse:

Carrie told of being laid off after working 8 years with a company. She was 6 months pregnant with an eight year old daughter, and had to go on COBRA for insurance, which she couldn’t afford. Her 8-year old went to visit her father in Argentina and found out that everyone there (including visitors) gets free health insurance. So she told her to go the dentist while she’s there. Unable to pay her insurance and credit card payments, she told of her rating going down and interest rate going up. I kind of felt for her, and anyone who goes through financial hardship through unexpected circumstances. Her husband/partner and baby were in attendance.

Ow.  I feel her pain, more or less; I had a few credit cards that went doggo when my job situation, back in 2003, went to pot. 

But then…: 

Then, I walked out to the parking lot, where I noticed Carrie’s husband/partner with their baby waiting at their car.

Yep. A BMW. Ellison’s “Politics of Generosity” seems to be working well with Carrie.  I wonder if her 8-year old got braces in Argentina, too. 

To be fair, we don’t know that the Beemer wasn’t paid for by Argentinian taxpayers, either…