You won’t hear me say this much, but Keri Miller had a good show this morning on MPR.

The subject was edumacation,  specifically education reform.  Miller – who, like most former TV people, is a taste I’ve just not acquired on the radio – was interviewing Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and  John Richard Schrock, a bio prof and and director of biology education at Emporia State University.

At a casual listen, Petrilli was doing the usual party line – China is kicking our butts at education, and we need serious reforms, most of which involve pouring more money into the system (and I’ll freely cop to the fact that I may be shorting his side of the discussion).

Shrock was more interesting.  He noted that America has traditionally had some significant advantages over the rest of the world, at least when it comes to secondary and higher education.  While it’s become a chanting point that China, India and Europe teach three times as much science as the US, Shrock notes that most of that education, especially in China, has been traditionally focused on rote memorization – on “teaching to the test” – while the US’ more freeform system traditionally fosters critical thinking and creativity.   Metric:  The US, for all of the caterwauling about our system’s shortcomings, has over 200 Nobel Prizes in the sciences (for which one must actually do something useful, unlike the Peace Prize).  China: 0.

So far.

Shock also notes, however, that as the US system moves more and more toward rote memorization and “teaching to the test”, the Chinese are working on copying the part of our system that actually does work – the critical thinking, the questioning, the creativity.

There was some good food for thought.  To sum it up:

Quit the caterwauling about class sizes: Class sizes in the US have shrunk steadily over the past 30 years.  They are lower than at any point in the history of compulsory education.  They are smaller than in any of our competitor nations. But., Shrock notes, the US system has systematically chosen “quantity over quality” – his words; we’ve thrown a lot of teachers into the classrooms, but given them an exceedingly low bar to try to surmount.  More on that in a bit.

Teaching Sucks: I’m not going to bag on teachers; most of my family, myself included, have been teachers of some kind at one point or another.  Many of them do a great job.  But I remember even when I was in college, looking at the outlook for a career in education, and thinking “Um, no”.  It wasn’t the money – for all of the right’s caterwauling about inflated teacher salaries, teaching in most of the country doesn’t pay quite as well as someone with the same credentials gets in the private sector, although the benefits usually help make up for it.  It was the fact that even then, 25 and more years ago, the establishment was turning teaching into a commodity job.  Shrock noted that in many countries – Finland, Japan, China, India – teaching is a prestigious job; it happens to pay relatively well compared to rest of the regional job market (although Shrock also notes that in Finland in particular, the socialized economy limits prospects in the private sector), but it’s really a matter of respect.  In these places, teachers actually get to teach.

The philosophy of reducing class sizes, and creating lots and lots of teachers to fill those rooms, is of dubious benefit to students; it does, however, make teachers unions a much more powerful constituency.

Shrock also notes that if we in the US were less concerned about throwing teachers into classrooms to reduce class sizes, we could make some headway on making teaching – and the results we get from our schools – suck less.  If we had the same class sizes we did 30 years ago (and, I suspect, the same relative number of administrators), we could pay good teachers $100K a year – and they could actually earn it. But in the US, while we throw a lot of teachers at the problem, we hamstring the good ones with a cornucopia of niggling distractions; the US system is clogged with unfunded mandates that suck time away from actual learning; those mandates are accompanied by rafts of administrators – one for every teacher, now, up from something like 1:9 forty years ago – whose edicts and mandates and general flailing about really contributes nothing to teaching (and that’s without even looking at the travesty of the Star Superintendent system in major urban schools).

It’s not for nothing that you see so many excellent teachers leaving the big, unionized district schools to go to work for charter, private and parochial schools; frequently for less money, but for jobs in systems where they get to teach, rather than spend their days yelling “off what” when tier after tier of administration says “jump”.

And, most of all…:

Teaching To The Test Is Killing Us: Here’s an utterly bipartisan set of foulups.  With the advent of No Child Left Behind, American education became “accountable” – to a series of more or less arbitrary numbers, derived by an even more arbitrary process.  Schools can lose their funding, and teachers their jobs, based on students’ performance on a series of cookie-cutter, one size fits all standardized tests – which, I suggest, are the absolute worst way to measure learning across a broad population of students. And no, I don’t have a better way, but neither can I think of a worse way;  it’s caused American education, in the past ten or so years, to morph into the thing which it theretofore was not; a system that pushes rote memorization; a system that de-emphasizes critical thinking (worse than it already is in some of our more blighted districts), and that punishes creativity, both in students and in teachers.

Is it a wonder some teachers leave the field – to go into customer service?

The show is worth a listen, when it finally comes out on podcast.  Mark your calendars, I actually recommended a Keri Miller show.

The Strib Editorial Board and the other varieties of intellectual roadkill that make up Minnesota’s left-wing pundocracy are all firmly agreed; “Tim Pawlenty’s eight years were a disaster”.

And if that crowd believes it, you know it’s untrue.

Brian McClung, mirabile dictu, got an op-ed in the Strib to set the record straight, and so he does:

On the final Sunday of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s eight years in office, the Star Tribune Editorial Board dropped a burning pile on the doorstep of the Governor’s Mansion, rang the bell and ran off without looking at Pawlenty’s complete record. Let’s step back and take a different look.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary declared “austerity” the top word of 2010. While austerity isn’t sexy — and may not garner as much cocktail party praise as issues Strib editorial writers prefer — Minnesota state government needed it badly. What Gov. Pawlenty did over the past eight years was a near-miracle. During the four decades before he took office, Minnesota government spending had grown by an average of more than 20 percent every two years; on his watch it was less than 2 percent.

Read the whole thing.  Use it to gargle and spit out the aftertaste of the leftymedia’s bilge-y meme.

…and there are more Republicans in the stands than Democrats.

the largest number of Republicans in the nation since December 2004 and the lowest number of Democrats since November 2002.

…but will it last?

In each of the recent election cycles, the winning party gained in net partisan identification during the course of the election year, Rasmussen Reports said, noting that gains can be short-lived. After the 2004 election, the Republican partisan decline began in February 2005, the pollster said, while the Democratic edge in 2006 began to slip as soon as the party took control of Congress in January.

The Democrats took power in 2008 and squandered their short-lived majority for the sake of deforming health care while more pressing liberal issues and campaign promises were shelved. Their anti-Bush-fueled sweep of Congress and the White House delivered them without a policy mandate.

They brought a baseball bat to a football game. They ignored reality, went with ideology, and America handed them their asses.

The GOP should not be thusly confused. Their mandate is clear and may have even less time to prove they are worthy.

…they are looking to score early, albeit symbolically for now, and act on that mandate and set a vote to repeal Obamacare…yet this month, and are also drawing a line in the sand as it relates to the federal debt ceiling. This might be messy folks, the Democrats will predict Armageddon if we don’t raise the limit on their credit card, but if not now, when?

Meanwhile, while those Americans that have work return to it today, the President suns himself.

If the final day of a vacation defines how it will be remembered, the Obamas will be packing memories of teal-colored water, soft breezes and plenty of sunshine — at least until clouds rolled in and the wind picked up in mid-afternoon. But that lead to a quick stop at Island Snow Shave Ice — an island (and Obama) favorite.

Maybe he can squeeze in a round of golf when he gets back.

“Debating [Obamacare], I don’t think that’s going to sit very well with the electorate”.

— Amy Walter, ABC News

Ms. Walter:  You are clearly from Planet Cambridge.

You do recall a bit of an election two months ago?  Biggest flip in 72 years in Congress – bigger than ’48, bigger than ’94, bigger than even ’74?

I think it’s going to “sit” just fine with the American people.

(Yeah,  of course I know – this is just part of the PR drumbeat that the mainstream media is going to put down to try to defend Obama.  Call it the “don’t believe what your eyes, ears and vote totals tell you, the truth is what we say it is”.  Kind of like the Humphrey Poll and the Minnesota Independent).

Sources at the State Capitol inform me that the Senate Sergeant at Arms office is denying press credentials to all partisan news outlets.

This most notably includes The Uptake, a left-leaning videoblog that, in the past session, had more press credentials than any other media outlet except the Pioneer Press.

UPDATE: The source reminds me that The Uptake – and any other news outlet – will have the same access to press conferences that they’ve always had, and will have the same access to one-time daily credentials they’ve always had.  They will, however, not have regular access to the Senate floor during the session.

UPDATE 2: If you recall, the Uptake’s tenure on the Capitol Press Corps has been a rocky one.

UPDATE 3:  MNPublius’ Jeff Rosenberg tweets:

Wow. The MNGOP is throwing organizations it doesn’t like out of the Capitol? That’s horrible. #stribpol

I’ll hasten to remind Jeff that all partisan news outlets have been denied credentials to the floor.

All of them.  Not just “organizations it doesn’t like”, although that’s the sort of conclusion most of us expect leftybloggers to leap to in coming days.

This is as opposed to the last (DFL-controlled) session, when The Uptake was granted credentials, but Dan Ochsner of St. Cloud conservative station KNSI was denied credentials, purely (say my sources) because of his ideology (and the fact that he’d run for Senate against Tarryl Clark).

More momentarily.

Governor Dayton, as his first “substantial” act as governor, is going to put the state on the hook for hundreds of millions in permanent entitlement spending in exchange for thirty pieces of silver a short-term federal subsidy.

Twila Brase of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom writes:

On Tuesday, January 4th Wednesday, Januaray 5th at 9:30 a.m. Governor Mark Dayton is holding a special Obamacare signing ceremony to implement the federal law’s Medicaid expansion program.

So why protest?

The Medicaid expansion program funded by $1.4 billion federal taxpayer dollars will cost the State (YOU) $188 million in state taxpayer dollars. Federal dollars eventually disappear leaving Minnesota on the hook for all the newly entitled. The program is expected to increase Minnesota’s Medicaid population by 21% (163,000 people)…Other states have sued to stop the Obamacare Medicaid expansion mandate…Governor Dayton plans to implement it.

If you listen to the media or the leftyblogs, they make it sound like the $1,4 Billion is going to answer a lot of long-term problems.  It’s not – and the DFL and Dayton want to turn the short-term windfall into another never-ending obligation.

Just like they did with every single “surplus” from 1990 to 2002.

The protest will be in the Rotunda Room 130 of the State Capitol, the governor’s Lobby.  Please try to meet in Room 123, right off the Rotunda, by 9:00AM.  .

OK.  You’ve been sworn in.

Now, let’s get down to business.

You and your supporters – the unions and your family – ran a shameful, slimy campaign.  And had you not outspent Tom Emmer and the GOP by about 3:1 – using family money, and money expropriated from union dues-payers – and had the media not (I firmly believe) exploited the “Bandwagon Effect” using polling that was either fatally but conveniently flawed or (part of me believes) rigged, you would have come up well more than 10,000 votes shy of where you ended up.

But OK, politics ain’t beanbag, and that’s truly life in politics.  And now you’re governor.

Let me tell you where I, a mere non-plutocrat schlemiel citizen, stand today.

I believe you are a perfectly fine human being – but I don’t like your platform (to the extent you had one; I pretty well eviscerated it during the campaign). I don’t like what your party stands for.  I don’t like what your supporters want to expropriate from me, and I don’t like how your willing sycophants in the media are going to try to snow-job Minnesotans into demanding the Legislature allow it.

And while I’m just a single guy, a schlemiel with a blog, I’m going to fight that snow job, and I’m going to fight your platform, and I’m going to fight everything you stand for – your tax policies, your healthcare policies, your regulatory policies, all of it.  I will do whatever I can to stymie you.  If any member of the GOP majority in both houses flags in his or her drive to beat your agenda back,  they will hear from me, and from anyone I can get into joining me – and as we saw last November, I’m hardly alone.

I will do whatever I can to make them stiffen their backbones.  We sent them to St. Paul.  We can send them home.

Because even though 42% of my neighbors fell for your odious campaign, we – The People – must not flag or fail. I – we – will fight you throughout your entire term, we’ll fight you on Capitol Hill, we’ll fight you in the shop floor and by the water cooler, we’ll fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the alternative media, we shall defend our lives and lifelihoods, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight you on all 10,000 lakes, we  shall fight you in the colleges, we shall fight you and your agenda in the City Council meetings and at the caucuses and in the streets and in the op-ed pages; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, you make it to the end of this term without turning power over to Lt. Governor Prettner Solon, then our silent, browbeaten majority, motivated and guided by the groundswell that will drive Obama from office in two years and nauseated by the arrogance of the DFL and its union and bureaucrat and media minions, will carry on the battle until,  in God’s good time, the Tea Party and all the other courses of conservative discontent, with all their silent but implacable power and might, step forth and get you voted out of office in 2014. [1]

My goal is not to negotiate or compromise with you, Governor Dayton.  My goal is to stop you.

(more…)

We’ve established this for quite some time – DFL Minnesotans speak a very, very different language from Real Minnesotans.

Case in point – Dave Mindeman at mnpACT, doing his fifth annual “Ten Worst Political Persons In Minnesota of 2010” award (an awarad that lacks the cool, polished cachet of the Shooties, and which Mindeman admits is a riff on Olberman, which is sort of like admitting you’re copying diarrhea).  As a public service, I will use my patience, knowledge, and access to the DFL Dictionary to translate Mindeman’s piece from DFL into regular English.

You’re welcome:

There are some who don’t like the negative connotation…that’s why for the past couple of years I have also done a 10 Best list as well. But it does give me a chance to reflect on what I see in Minnesota politics…and believe me, a lot of it reflects the dark side.

Translation: “Dissent from my world view is evil.  But don’t call me McCarthyist!”.

Looking over the past lists, the range goes from that Lizard people guy to Katherine Kersten to the Star Tribune. Some people are consistently on the list so you will see some familiar names. Some are one shot wonders, but each year a crop of people always appear that affect political discourse in Minnesota.

Translation: “Unlike calling people I disagree with “the worst person”, which is just lovely for “discourse in Minnesota”.

Here is the “Worst” List for 2010:

10. Brad Brandon of the Berean Bible Baptist Church. (Note: he also wins the alliteration award). Brandon is a Hastings pastor who decided to defy the IRS and endorse an entire slate of candidates (mostly Republican with a sprinkling of Constitution) directly from his pulpit. He challenge anyone to file a complaint (and one has been), and proceeded to preach his sermon on the need to elect those God-fearing Republicans. You have to wonder what Erik Paulsen did to get on God’s bad side — he wasn’t endorsed.

Translation: “Dissent and civil disobedience were the supreme civic virtues – until January 20, 2009″.

9. Randy Brown (SD 56 GOP Webmaster). To the tune of “Who Let the Dogs Out”, Mr. Brown thought it would be funny to profile a video on his BPOU’s website that portrayed Democratic women in a less than flattering light…..while putting Republican women on display as the sex objects Mr. Brown seemed to be fantasizing about.

Translation: “Because goodness knows liberals would never, ever, ever act like a bunch of giggly schoolboys and catty cheerleaders. Darn obscure Republican webmasters , acting out that purely-GOP trait!”.

8. Zygi Wilf (Vikings Owner). Zygi was #6 on last year’s list and he is back again…for the same reason. The State of Minnesota is dealing with a monster deficit,

Translation: “If you damn teabaggers don’t cover every damn nickel of the Autopilot Budget, I will call you names!”

7. Minnesota Majority. This GOP sympathizer group seems to have made a mission out of discrediting a very good state election system.

Translation: “Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie. Do not question the Mighty Ritchie…”

6. Target Corp. In the “what were they thinking” department, Target Corp’s donations to the Tom Emmer campaign became a very public affair. And what’s worse, a carefully honed public image of a gay friendly corporation was nearly destroyed.

Translation: “And Target’s market cap went…er, wait, it kept pace and/or slightlty exceeded the retail sector since July, when the whole astroturf flap got started.  Never mind.”

Are corporate tax breaks really that important?

Translation: “And where did all those manufacturing and warehouse jobs with Target, 3M, Best Buy, Ecolab, Medtronic, Boston Sci, Minnesota Public Radio and every single other signficant manufacturere in Minnesota go, anyway?  Maybe we need a law to keep them from leaving!  Damn that Tim Pawlenty!”

Frankly, the idea that corporations could come close to making a “political” list like this is a little disturbing, but the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has changed all of that forever.

Translation: “Because Goddess forbid that the Teachers Union and the SEIU have any competition in the marketplace of paid-for-ideas!”

5. John Kline. Congressman Kline will soon take over the chairmanship of the Education and Labor Committee in the House. And along with that will be his total disregard for union rights and his big buck contributions from the for-profit education corporations. Along with the energy companies and the banking industry, etc, etc. He has nothing but disdain for health care reform as well as disdain for his own district.

Translation: “HEY!  ALL YOU TEABAGGING MORONS IN THE SECOND DISTRICT!  Don’t you know what’s GOOD for you?”

Roads and bridges in the 2nd get nothing from John Kline because he’s against earmarks. He’s saving us money… oh, wait, no he isn’t. Our money gets spent in other districts.

Translation: “The system is more important than its consequences.  Long live the system!”

4. Tony Sutton (Chair of the MN GOP). The provocative chairman of the MN GOP managed to open his mouth at every inopportune moment.

Translation: “My life would be so much nicer if Teabaggers just shut up and let me run everything”.

If his cohorts had worked as hard at real facts and figures as they did at distortions, they might have pulled out at least one of those statewide races.

Translation: “As opposed to the fact-chocked campaign that Alliance For A Better Minnesota ran!  I just get tingly thinking about it!”.

3. MN Chamber of Commerce. Outside of a few token Democratic endorsements, the MN Chamber was hell bent on reversing legislative power in Minnesota.

Translation: “Don’t those idiot wingnut teabaggers know what’s good for them?  Taxing business more makes it easier to do busienss!  Er – doesn’t it?”

2. Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty is on this list because he has flat out ruined Minnesota.

Translation: “Never mind the near-lowest in the nation unemployment – he RUINED us!  RUINED, I say!”

He has left us with an incredible deficit.

Translation: “And that fiscally-responsible DFL tried SO hard to control spending!  Really!

He presided over the biggest transfer of tax burden (state to local governement) in history.

Translation: “And then he forced all those cities to spend, spend, spend!  He’s a WITCH, I tell you!”

He watched a bridge fall down and then he vetoed transportation funding at every opportunity.

Translation: “Why, if we had finished the Central Corridor and built a network of ethanol stations, that bridge would still be standing!”

1. Michele Bachmann. Michele has topped this list for 3 years in a row

Translation: “I ran out of ideas”.

Glad to help.

Happy New Year, Dave!

As this post appears at 8:30AM, Mark Dayton will be sworn in as Minnesota’s 40th Governor (UPDATE:  Oops.  I got that off of a state website.  It was apparently wrong; the swearing in will apparently be held at noon.  Thanks, State of Minnesota!).

Time to give the guy his due.

He won the election, by whatever means.  He is now the governor.  Mine, as well as all of the people who voted for him.

So congratulations, Governor Dayton.  Enjoy the inauguration!  And while I oppose you, your agenda, and everything about you, I sincerely hope you do a good job.

As we wait for the new, GOP-controlled Legislature to take office, Kurt Zellers K sends a message via a Strib Op-Ed that the age of the obsequious RINO is over:

The path begins with private-sector job creation. High taxes, mandates, and excessive and redundant regulation are hobbling Minnesota’s business community.

Pro-growth policies that provide incentives for business development and job creation, relief from taxes and regulations, and a freeing of market resources to enhance Minnesota’s competitiveness are needed to jump-start the state’s economy.

Music to my ears.

(Hint, hint, Representative Abeler).

Regulatory reform, a necessity this legislative session, is a common-ground issue for Republicans and Democrats.

Of course, the two sides have different definitions of “reform” – but it’s good to seize the term first.

Here’s the part I find interesting (emphasis added):

Incentives for economic recovery will require sacrifice. With a $6 billion budget deficit, some tough decisions will need to be made. Minnesota families have made changes in their spending habits to live within limited means. It is time for state government to do the same.

Each month Minnesota is spending $200 million more than it takes in. This is not a temporary problem.

Over the next two years, government spending is anticipated to continue to outpace available revenue by 14 percent.

That our DFL-choked government spent too much over this past four years is not a secret – but we know as well as Zellers does that the $6.2 Billion figure was an accounting extrapolation of the out-year budget’s hikes from the 2009 biennium.

So the only reason to use the figure is to…

…hoist the DFL by their own noxious petard.

Especially with a sendoff like this:

Republican leaders find this situation unacceptable and support a sustainable approach to government spending that looks beyond the two-year budget cycle and is grounded in living within our means.

Tax increases are not a viable solution for resolving the short-term budget deficit or stabilizing the structural need for reform.

Words to live by.

Our new GOP legislature starts up business today – and Mr. Dilettante has as good a look ahead as you will find anywhere in town today.

Since Glenn Maxham – former TV news editor-turned-moral-scold of the Tea Party – wants a “list of enumerated freedoms that We The People have lost” so that we angry peasants’ complaints satisfy his own rigorous standards for standing (he was a tourist in the USSR, doncha know), I just thought I’d let him know i’m on the job.  Because they’re popping up all over the place, like this DUI Dragnet in Florida:

Florida is among several states now holding what are called “no refusal” checkpoints.

It means if you refuse a breath test during a traffic stop, a judge is on site, and issues a warrant that allows police to perform a mandatory blood test.

It’s already being done in several counties, and now Unfried is working to bring it to the Tampa Bay area.

“I think you’ll see the difference because people will not drink and drive. I truly believe that,” she said.

Not everyone is on board, though.

DUI defense attorney Kevin Hayslett sees the mandatory blood test as a violation of constitutional rights.

“It’s a slippery slope and it’s got to stop somewhere,” Hayslett explained, “what other misdemeanor offense do we have in the United States where the government can forcefully put a needle into your arm?”

The federal government says Florida has among the highest rates of breathalyzer refusal.

That’d be the Fourth Amendment being torched there, Mr. Maxham.

Indeed – Mothers Against Drunk Driving has become one of the most insidious attackers of liberty in this nation.  Other enemies – Janet Napolitano, Julius “Seizure” Genachowski – come and go with different political waves.  But MADD is always there, through “up” and “down” waves in civil liberty, always there to sap more of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments (and keep the police chasing after ever-more revenue, at the expense of all other law enforcement), no matter who’s in office.

But we’re not done yet, Mr. Maxham!

A look back on ten climate predictions based on “incontrovertible evidence“, over the past forty years.

Joel Rosenberg is holding a Legal Defense Fund fundraising dinner tonight:

Location: Chanhassen AmericInn conference room. Donations can be made at the door, or by contributing to the Legal Defense Fund either by mail or in person at any Wells Fargo location, in or out of Minnesota.

It’ll feature photographer and Second Amendment activist – and yes, he combines the two – Oleg Volk:

Oleg Volk will be both speaking and giving a photo presentation*.

Joel will be attending but, on advice of counsel, won’t be discussing pending legal matters.

All profits, after the room and the food are paid for, will go to the Legal Defense Fund. (Oleg and all of the servers — Joel, Felicia, Judy, Rachel, and friends — are donating their time, of course.) Attending registrations are limited to 40 people — the Fire Marshall insists — so please sign up in advance, if you can.

Note: the Legal Defense Fund is not a registered charity, and contributions are not tax-deductible. Alas.

Volk’s an interesting guy, and I hope you can make it.  I have family stuff tonight, but I’ll be donating via other means…

My stories on the Great Poll Scam.

King Banaian’s Legislative Page.

It’s time once again for a tradition unlike any other; the 2010 edition of the Twin Cities’ foremost blog award ceremony – the Shooties!

Every year for the Shooties, we honor the worst – and occasionally the best – of Minnesota blogging. And this year is no exception – only more so!

So without any further ado, let’s move on to the awards!  We’ll kick things off with…:

The Dan Rather “Fake Is Accurate!” Award For Journalistic Ethics: This award goes to Erin Maye, “Intern” at “The Uptake”, a left-“leaning” video “news” blog.  While being busted mangling context on a number of stories, Ms. Maye – a “Peace Studies” student – tweeted “I’m Editing.  I feel important because I can make people say things they may not have said.  Muhahaha”.  Prediction:  She will run Gawker Media by 2012.

The Tiger Beat Celebrity Saturation Award:   This year’s TBCSA, given for the year’s best example of “news” coverage that combined slavering saturation with excellence in contextual laxity, goes to the Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey and his ongoing obsession with Bradlee Dean, ultra-mega-super-di-duper fundamentalist evangelist and talk radio host (whose program, “Sons of Liberty”, follows mine at AM1280 every Saturday).  Birkey wrote about Dean no less thatn 23 times in the past year.  But the coverage wasn’t just of a level of saturation that made Larry Jacobs sit up and go “er, wait, he’s overquoted”.  It took vast liberties with context and attribution:

• Birkey wrote in high dudgeon that Michele Bachmann and Tom Emmer would “appear in Dean’s documentary”, My War, without bothering to learn that the “appearances” were from shots of news clippings (or without thinking his audience needed to know).
• Birkey claimed that Emmer gave “financial support” to Dean’s ministry, without disclosing that the “Support” was the purchase of a $250 table at a non-political teen outreach dinner – long before Emmer was a candidate.
• Birkey claimed that Dean said Moslem nations had more integrity than Christian ones because they executed gays. It was a lie.

And more.

The “Dump Bachmann” Award For Unintended Consequences:  Campaigning in the GOP-leaning Sixth District, Tarryl Clark wrote a piece…

…on the Daily Kos.

No better way to paint one as a “reasonable centrist” than writing for “Democratic Underground Lite”.

It probably helped take an eight point race and make it a twelve-pointer.

The Joe McCarthy Trophy For Resurrecting The Letter And Spirit of Joe McCarthy: This one – given for bringing McCarthyism back from the dead – goes to Minneesota “Progressive” Project’s Joe Bodell for his January plea to least think about treating Tea Party sympathies and speaking out against The One and other forms of dissent as “sedition“.  I guess dissent isn’t patriotic anymore!

The Abe Gibron Trophy: After years of humiliating itself by running a smug, ill-informed, badly-written, phoned-in, rote, and talking-points-driven column by Nick Coleman, the Strib changed things up, giving the gig to Jon Tevlin, who turned the column into a smug, ill-informed, badly-written, phoned-in, rote, and talking-points-driven column.

The Jeff Fecke “The Male Client Is Obviously Guilty” Award For Egregious Misandry: This year’s winner is Rachel Nygaard, who took the facts of Rep. Tom Hackbarth’s arrest (he and his carry-permitted handgun were picked up by the Saint Paul Police, inadvertently parked by the Saint Paul office of Infanticide Mart, where he admitted his was having a bit of a clingy snit over a woman’s excuse for begging off on a date; a sign the guy needs to get a grip, not a crime.  So far.  There was no evidence that Hackbarth acted in any way upon that snit, by the way, other than by driving to Saint Paul which is, by the way, also not a crime).  Nygaaard extrapolated this into a Lifetime Movie, with a slavering man beating down a woman’s door and shooting her in a fit of testosterone-induced rage, potentially.

The runner up?  Fecke himself!  After getting this award named after him for his performance in the Duke Lacrosse case, where Fecke was prominent among “feminists” who tried, convicted, castrated and executed three college guys who, it turned out, were falsely accused of rape and railroaded by an unethical prosecutor and a media that looked at the case – a black “victim”, a bunch of smug, rich white boy “perps”, and saw dollar signs.

Well, he’s baaaack with the whole “I, Jury” bit, in re Julian Assange’s very curious “sexual assault” accusations.  (UPDATE: The American Petard exchange reports that petard prices are skyrocketing; those petards are getting hoisted and blown up so fast, production can’t keep up with capacity anymore).

The Yarmagh The Destroyer Award For Rolling A “9” For “Charisma”, Even With An Elivsh Sorcerer Character: A twofer for Joe Bodell, who learned that “cleric” is actually the singular for clergy, rather than a smear against Muslims by the big, bad conservative media. Well, we hope he learned it, anyway.

The Robin Marty Award For Calm, Dispassionate Fact-Checking: Andy Birkey is a repeat winner, here, for his piece impugning the Tea Party for a “threatening message to the local AFSCME office from a regional Tea Party leader” that happened to be neither threatening nor from anyone that anybody in the regional Tea Party leadership had ever heard of, at all (not that Birkey ever bothered to check, much less report that).

The National Concussion Association Poster Child For Blogging While Suffering From A Crippling Brain Injury: Barbara O’Brien from Mahablog.  (UPDATE:  I’m sorry – O’Brien doesn’t suffer from a brain injurty.  She’s just blood-curdlingly stupid).

The Walter Duranty Award: Ezra “The Constitution Is Haaard” Klein and Matt Yglesias, who proved themselves almost as stupid as O’Brien.

The Baghdad Bob Award: This clear winner this year goes to the “Humphrey Institute’s” Professor Larry Jacobs. While the Star-Tribune’s “Minnesota Poll” remained a joke (the virtual-tie Governor race was portrayed as a seven point blowout, but only by telling Minnesota that Democrats were a quarter more likely to vote – in the most GOP year in recent history), the Humphrey Institute poll released just before the election showed it as a twelve-point massacre.  A post-election analysis showed that the Humphrey’s polling over-sampled DFL-heavy areas, but didn’t weight for that oversample the way every credible poll does.  The Twin Cities media may try to offer a defense against the charge that Jacobs, and they, are trying to foment a “bandwagon effect” with the front-page play these polls get in all the regional media – but they haven’t offered it yet.

The runner-up for this award, though, goes to the entire Twin Cities media, into whose coverage of the governor’s race the Humphrey and Strib polls neatly fit.  Their performance – all of them, every one – in this past election was nothing short of shameful.  Faced with a DFL candidate who had embarassed the state in the US Senate, and had multiple run-ins with alcoholism and crippling depression in the past five years, and whose (entirely smear-oriented) campaign was financed by a shady, utterly unexamined consortium of unions and the Dayton Family (including Dayton himself), and whose chemical and mental health state remained utterly examined (barring a perfunctory Rachel Stassen-Berger puff piece run long before the non-wonk voter even knew there was a governor race coming up), the Twin Cities media gamboled and cavorted about with stories of Tom Emmer’s ancient drinking-and-driving convictions, a malaprop about waiter tips (which was not even inaccurate), and whether the post-Citizens United end of the ban on corporate donations (that weren’t from unions or trust fund babies) would end democracy as we knew it.  It was the year that it became perfectly clear that they see their mission to be to comfort the DFL and afflict the MNGOP.

And Finally, The Charles Townsend Award, the keystone award of these entire festivities.  Charles Townsend was a British Parliamentarian in the 1770’s, whose response to the growing “Tea Party” in the colonies…

“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

…was worthy of Larry Pogemiller or Nick Coleman.

This year’s award goes to Governor-Elect Dayton (and, really, by extension every single person who supported him).  The Dayton budget plan was built on a lie, and – quite simply – can not succeed, even notwithstanding the fact that it’s dead on arrival at the GOP Legislature.  Support for Dayton is support for the idea that we, The People, are serfs whose labors exist to support government first.  Then our families.

So for the first time, about 43% of Minnesota wins the award!

Congratuations!

And we’ll see you next year!  Because Goddess knows there’ll be material!

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.  No hangovers for us! (At least, none that you can actually hear…)

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I follow from 1-3PM Central
• The King Banaian Show! – King is still on hiatus onAM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities – but not for long! 
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream). 
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

So pour a Bloody Mary and make up some pancakes and bacon, and join us!