Anyone remember this classic?

So, how is it that nakedly partisan bloggers who make things up left and right are gaining street cred while the mainstream media, which spend a lot of time criticizing themselves, are under attack?

Or this one?

“Bloggers don’t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their every thought with the moon. Like graffiti artists, they tag the public square.”

If you’ve been blogging in Minnesota any time at all, you know these quotes.

They’re from Nick Coleman, in his classic column “Blogged Down In Web Fantasy”, from 2004, in which he declared his sloppy brand of war on the Twin Cities bloggers (“Buh-LAW-gurs”, as he memorably pronounced the word on his unlamented radio show) that were starting to chip away at the sand castle he and his fellow “ink stained wretches” lived in.  The Strib removed the column from their website years ago, but its legacy lives on, in local blogger and national journalism circles.   In it, Coleman claimed that card-carrying journalists like himself were better than bloggers because they’d spent years covering the news, as opposed to bloggers, who merely work for decades and raise families and pay taxes and stuff.   Journalists know the rules and operate with accountability, he said (amid a column attacking someone he never did actually name, which was a dodge of accountability and against the rules for “journalists”).

This was when Nick Coleman was riding high – when he had a three-times-a-week column at the Strib for well into six figures, and a morning show at the local leftytalk station…

…where he indulged a curious predilection for crudely sexualizing people who dared to disagree with him (Go ahead – count the gay jokes in the link.  Only liberals on a liberal station can get away with that much homophobia).

Well, in The Boss’ immortal words, we’re still here and he’s all gone.  From the Strib and AM950 (which I’m told is still on the air, not that anyone cares), at least.  I’m not indulging in schadenfreud, here; I don’t believe in Karma, but what goes around comes around. 

But old journos never die – they just get jobs with left-leaning non-profits.

And they start blogs.   In which they do…

…well, pretty much exactly what Nick Coleman warned us about nine years ago.

The State He’s In – Nick popped up on the radar again.  After a stint writing propaganda for a think tank in Saint Cloud, a couple of college classes (in which a fellow student noted he described himself as a “recovering journalist”) and I-really-honestly-don’t-care-what-else, Coleman resurfaced as the “Executive Editor” of “The Uptake”, a videoblog financed by liberals with deep pockets; think a slightly-downmarket MinnPost with more video and less Brian Lambert.

There, he roams the same halls he used to roam.  And he gets positive reinforcement from other lefties:

That’s Coleman, in the jaunty racing cap. With (from L) Doug Grow (from the Joyce Foundation-supported MinnPost), Jane Kay, some minion, and Rep. Heather Martens (DFL-66A).

And he’s got a blog.  And he still knows stuff…

…about crudely sexualizing his opponents with all the grace of an eighth-grade locker room bully.

As to getting a story right, as opposed to just making things up?  Not so much.

Exhibit A:  The piece he wrote about the open carry activists canceling their get-together at “Open Streets” (we wrote about it this morning).

Remember:  He’s A Professional – I’ll add red emphasis to the frequent, dork-fingered sexualizations just to show how very, very juvenile the old duffer is.  Go ahead.  Scan it. 

The gun-slinging flashers who threatened to bring their guns to town and parade them around openly in Minneapolis and St. Paul have put their warm guns back in their happy pockets and backed down, running away at the first signs of gun-control Mommas and urban bicycling activists.

As someone said on my Facebook page: “Buncha candy asses!”

To be fair, “someone on my Facebook page” is no worse a level of sourcing than Coleman ever did during his “official columnist” career. 

And as we discussed this morning, the story had nothing – bupkes – to do with “gun control Mommas and bike activists”.  Neither of them ever turned up in the decision.  Second Amendment human rights activists mix it up with the usual “gun control mommas” constantly, and win the debate – emphasis on the term “debate” – every single time.  Because the law, the Constitution, the facts and morality itself are on our side.

There are two absolute, incontrovertible facts to keep in mind:

• It’s the threats, Stupid:  MN-RKBA – Minnesotans for the Right to Keep And Bear Arms – cancelled their Open Carry gathering entirely due to the threats of violence.  Legal firearms carriers know it’s best to avoid danger.  That’s what they did.  Period.  There was no more to it. 
• Coleman is lying: He’s trying to help his buddies in the gun-grab movement (see the cozy little group hug photo above) squeedge a victory out of a year where they couldn’t exploit a mass-shooting into a political win at an all-liberal Minnesota state Capitol.  This is the closest they’ve come to one; Coleman is trying, in his ham-fisted way, not to waste the crisis. 

Let me re-emphasize this:  Coleman, and the dim bulb Jane Kay and habitual liar Rep. Heather Martens, are doing the end-zone happy dance over the non-news non-occurrence of a non-event.   

That’s it.  That’s their “victory”, the only one they had, even in a state run entirely by liberals.  For now.

That’s just pathetic.

Insert The Usual Boilerplate – Coleman lays out the scenario.  Sort of:

The story started Monday when a gun-owners group used its Facebook page to invite members to attend the first of this summer’s “Open Streets” events this coming Sunday in South Minneapolis. Although “attend” doesn’t quite cover it: The gun owners specifically were encouraged to bring their weapons and to flash them in public, carrying them openly for the benefit of all those in attendance at “Open Streets,” an ongoing series of good-humored street fairs promoting bicycling and pedestrian rights.

And – Coleman omits – the various virtues of neighborliness.  Second Amendment supporters have been doing events like this for years, most notably our “Open Carry Picnics” a few years back at the Lake Harriet Bandshell, where dozens of regular Minnesotans would gather, eat, talk with their neighbors – many with their legal firearms in plain view. 

If you heard about them, it wasn’t in the news.  The only thing that ever happened was a good time.  In the couple such events I attended (sans visble firearm; that wouldn’t be my style, even if I did own a gun and have a carry permit), I remember one person – white, upper-middle-class, female, oozing “Carlton College” attitude from every manicured pore – running to the park police and demanding mass arrests, and being politely rebuffed because we were doing something legal, in a legal manner. 

He Doesn’t Know Stuff!  – Coleman:

This Sunday’s kickoff event is scheduled for a 20-block stretch of Lyndale Ave. South, one of the south side’s gun-plagued corridors.

And there’s the conceit the left keeps trying – and with the dimmer members of our media and political class, succeeding – at passing off; the idea that guns are the problem.  That there’s a “plague” of guns prowling Lyndale from the Twenties through the Fifties, randomly picking off innocent passersby and kids doing homework in their living rooms.

It’s untrue, of course; we have a plague of people who use guns to enforce their gangs’ rules, protect their (illegal) business’ turf from competition, take out revenge for various slights (in a manner our modern urban culture glorifies), with guns.

Not a one of them has a carry permit.  Not a one of them passed a background check, taken the training course, or bought their firearms legally. 

Maybe Coleman doesn’t know the distinction.  Or maybe he, like the anti-gun groups with whom his “Uptake” shares funders, really really wants the distinction to be blurred. 

If it’s the former, he’s wrong.  If it’s the latter, he’s lying. 

Again.

The Original Classist Gangsta – Coleman – the child of a highly prominent legislator, the stepchild of a prominent publisher – loves to try to pound the outlines of his childhood into the rough-and-tumble Irish-Catholic-In-America myth.  He’s spent a career trying to portray himself as a Studs Terkel “Everyman with a Typewriter” type street journo. 

It’s a crock, of course; the last we checked, Coleman lived in a tony part of Saint Paul, near Grand and Summit, a leafy neighborhood dotted with private colleges and tudor homes.  And more power to him!

But watch Coleman wrap himself in the “urban activist warrior” flag:

 For some reason, the promise/threat of suburban gun flashersbrandishing their weapons along the avenue did not have a reassuring effect on the benighted city dwellers who prefer fewer guns, not more, on their streets.

(“Hey!  We don’t vote on civil rights!” Remember that from the gay marriage debate?)

A quick look at the city’s “shot spotter” maps, in addition to showing an alarming number of recorded gun shots on the city’s North Side (dozens each week), shows that there have been a couple dozen shots fired on the streets in the Lyndale-Hennepin area in the past two months.

Yep.  Now – can Coleman show us that any of them were fired by law-abiding citizens, much less carry permittees?

Of course not. 

Now, it’s time for some classism!:

Imagine how reassured you would feel when hundreds of bearded guys from Andover and Elko show up in North Minneapolis or the Summit-University area of St Paul (“Open Streets” events will take place in both of those communities later this summer) with Bushmasters and Brownings slung over their shoulders or Glocks and Rugers hanging from their paunches.

Condescension for People Not Like Nick is the main color in Coleman’s palette.  That and junior-high pseudo-sexual japery.

It’s also part and parcel of the most cancerous trait of the Left; the battle isn’t ideas versus ideas, or even people vs. people.  The battle they fight is Classes against Classes.  And they define the classes. 

At the very least, it’s a mark of intellectual laziness.  At the worst, it’s a cancer that’s killed millions in the last 100 years.

But let’s run with the thought; what if hundreds of guys from Elko and Andover and Forest Lake – some bearded and paunchy, some elderly and flinty, some young and smokin’ hot, but every last one of them a carry permittee with the legal right to carry a firearm – did show up at the festivals?

What would happen?

The smart money says “Not a damn thing” – other than anti-gunners acting out on their paranoia. 

Thought Experiments for The Unthinking – But since Nick’s in a mood to play hypotheticals, let’s come out and play, shall we?

Here’s a neat mental exercise: Try to imagine hundreds of inner-city residents carrying weapons at the Andover Family Fun Fest, July 13. Just because they can.

Nick, if you’re reading this;  let’s do indeed!

I’ll take you up on your challenge!  Let’s you and I get “hundreds” of “inner city residents” (by which I assume you mean “black people”, as opposed to “family guys who live in Saint Paul’s Midway”, like me), with legal carry permits, just like you had, and just like I may hypothetically have – complete with objective proof that they are law-abiding citizens that the permit conveys – and trek out to Andover on July 13!

And let’s see what happens!

Just think, Nick:  you and me can watch the hijinx unfold!

What do you suppose is going to happen?

Nothing.  Nothing is going to happen.  Oh, some ninny may run to a cop, who’ll investigate, see the “inner city resident” is a regular schlemiel with a carry permit, and gently tell the complainant to relax.   Just like happens with legitimate carriers all over the state or, more usually, doesn’t happen. 

More likely?  The “inner city” – which I suppose does mean “black” or “Latino” or “H’mong”  in Coleman’s mind – carry permittee will tell us to get tied; they have a live to live.

And they’ll be right. 

But let’s do get the ball rolling on this, Mr. Coleman. 

Heres’s How You Tell A Hack With A “Journalist” Badge He Got From A Box Of Cracker Jacks – Next, Coleman drops any pretense of “journalism” that may have evaded extinction, and openly parrots his whiny pals in the gun-grabber movement; I added emphasis to the really demented stuff:

Openly carrying firearms inside the Minnesota Capitol this winter helped gun-law opponents shoot down gun-safety legislation.

Coleman is regurgitating Heather Martens’ delusion that the law-abiding carry permittees who had notified Capitol security of their intent to carry, and visibly wore their legal, permitted firearms into the hearings, were doing it to “intimidate” the legislators.

It’s bullshit, of course.  It was a demonstration of “civil obedience” – showing the legislators that the law-abiding gun owner isn’t the cartoon that ghouls like Jane Kay and Nick Coleman and the City Pages portray to their audiences.  We’re regular schlubs who work day jobs and raise kids, just like everyone else.  And we vote. 

And it worked. 

But Coleman isn’t going to let facts get in his way:

But the tactic backfired this time. Maybe you can intimidate people in the Capitol, but not in the cycling community. Bicyclists wee outraged and told the gunslingers to stay away.

They wavered. Then they cracked. Finally, they called off the whole thing when the Gun Control Mommas stood up to them.

Let me put this as bluntly as it needs to be put:  Coleman is lying.

The “Gun Control Mommas” – “Moms Want Action”, Jane Kay’s toxic little astroturf group with fewer members than “the Uptake” has paid staff – had nothing to do with the cancellation. 

Neither did Coleman’s mythical “cycling community” (Note, Nick:  I’m part of the “cycling community”.  There was no memo). 

Coleman is making things up.  He’s taking correlations (a memo from the impotent Jane Kay, facebook proclamations from wannabe “biking community” spokesbots) and making up a causation.

He’s lying. 

The Gun Flashers ran for cover. By Thursday, the skedaddling gunsters canceled their Gun Wiggle, blaming the liberal media, bicycle punks and the “intolerance” of the mamas who opposed the plan they had clearly hoped would get them some media time and notoriety. Their plan worked, but not the way they hoped. The guns blew up in their faces.

It’s the closest the gun-grabber “movement” – really a collection of astroturf checkbook advocacy groups – have come to a victory in recent years.  And they’re jumping up and down like toddlers that just made a good pants. 

Candy asses.

 That’s big talk, coming from Nick Coleman, a nakedly (ew) partisan blogger who as we’ve shown makes things up left and right to gain “street cred”; a man who knows nothing about anything he wasn’t told by other people in his vanishingly tiny social circle, but who sat down to share his every thought with the moon. Like a grafitti artist holding a spray paint can between his knees, he’s tagging the public square, and doing it very, very badly. 

A man who’ll never answer for any of his lies and distortions because he’s never had to; he’s used and abused the “journalist/columnist’s” factual “get out of jail free” card while enjoying the protection of the Big Institutional Media system his entire career, and who now – let’s be honest – gets paid to parrot the lies he’s told to parrot. 

Same as he ever was.  Just much, much smaller.

UPDATE:  I didn’t even catch all of Coleman’s lies.  Attorney David Gross – one of the legal workhorses of the Second Amendment movement in Minnesota – left a comment which points out even more perfidy. 

One of many quotes worth reading (hence you should read the whole thing):

…Coleman was lying some more, as I read the published material, when he claimed that the Open Streets sponsors were against what Shelley had planned. I guess he can’t help himself from not letting the facts get in his way.
“Priem said Open Street organizers will not ask the gun owners not to attend. ‘Everyone is welcome at Open Streets,’ she said.”

Keep ’em coming.

How long has it been since I, or any Twin Cities conservative blogger, lit up a Nick Coleman column?

Seems like forever. 

Fisking Nick “I Know Stuff” Coleman used to be to Twin Cities blogging what bread was a a meal; a staple.  But since Nick’s exit from the Strib, he’s been pretty much out of sight.

No more. 

Tune in at noon.

A bit of legal background first:  A Minnesota carry permit isn’t a “Concealed Carry” permit. It allows a permittee to carry a firearm, either concealed or openly.   Now, most permittees carry concealed; partly because there’s no sense in showing a criminal who it is that might oppose them, and partly because we live in a society where some people become fairly unhinged around guns.

And by “a society”, I mean “modern, NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, St. Olaf-attending, upper-middle-class white-as-the-driven-snow urban America”.  People who’ve never had to learn to deal with cognitive dissonance, because they’ve experienced so little of it.

By the way – if I did have a carry permit (or a handgun, for that matter), I doubt I’d ever find an occasion to carry openly;  in Saint Paul, there’d be too many people getting erroneously exercised over it.  I like to pick my battles.  In other parts of the state, it’d be less of a battle.

Pick Your Battles

That is, in fact, one of the most important lessons from carry permit training; the best way to use your permitted firearm is not at all.  Never.  Using a handgun is, at best, the second-worst possible outcome to an altercation.

And if you talk with most carry permittees, you find that that lesson has sunk in.  When someone flips them off in traffic, they don’t flip back; they “wave with all five fingers”, as a carry permit instructor of mine advised.  More so?  If they see a dangerous situation brewing – a bar fight, a skeevy situation – they make themselves scarce.

Because nothing is harder to talk your way out of than a shooting.

A permitted firearm is there only for when the battle picks you, and there’s nothing – nothing! – you can do about it.

And Minnesota permittees are pretty good about picking their battles.  In ten years, there has been precisely one unjustified homicide carried out by a permittee.  That’s a murder rate a couple of orders of magnitude below the rate for the general population, and bordering on “infinitely”.

Avoidance

Earlier this week, a group called the Minnesotans for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms decided to try an awareness raising event; holding an “Open Streets – Open Carry” event at an “Open Streets” event in Southwest Minneapolis.

The “Open Streets” events are, of course, a metro-wide series of glorified block-club parties.

Twin Cities’ gun groups have, of course, done open carry events for years; most notable were the “Open Carry Picnics” at Lake Harriett.  You may have heard about them – but not because anything untoward happened there.

The intention?  Have a picnic.  Pull up a grill and some lawn chairs and socialize.

Period.

Unfortunately, MNRKBA picked the one in Southwest Minneapolis – a neighborhood full of Saint Olaf/Carlton liberals who are not well disposed to cognitive dissonance.  They called in their connections.

And Don’t You Dare Call The Media Biased!

The Strib and the City Pages covered the story…

…well, no.  The two papers served as PR agents for the neighborhood’s indignant.

“Gun Rights Groups Plan To Pack Heat At Open Streets” read the City Pages headline.

“Pack Heat” is one of those things reporters write about carry (open or concealed) when they don’t really understand it, but know they feel contempt for it anyway.

As to the Strib?  “Gun Owners Target Twin Cities Street Fairs For Coming Out Party“?   If you think the title is loaded, go ahead and count the number of times writer Mary Lynn Smith uses the phrase “gun-totin'” in her article.

Loaded much?

But it’s not just the articles that are the problem.

Catnip For Ninnies With Authoritarian Streaks

Check out the comments.

Especially the ones threatening violence.   Anonymity and a public forum certainly brings out the online courage in a lot of people, doesn’t it?

Over on the MN-RKBA Facebook page, one woman stated she’d go out of her way to pick a fight with an open carrier, and then lie to the police to try to get the carrier arrested (the comments were deleted).

There were just too many people expressing an intent to cause some sort of mischief, legal or otherwise…

…over something that is every Minnesotan’s legal right, should they choose to exercise it.

Battle Picked

With the threats, and remembering the basics – avoid dangerous situations – the MN-RKBA decided to call off the open carry events.

Not because they were asked to, nicely or not.

Not because they didn’t have every legal right to be there, just like any other community group.

Because a bunch of wannabe thugs threatened to create a thing all responsible carry permittees always avoid; a situation.

I Did Say Ninnies, Didn’t I?

Of course, Heather Martens and “Moms Demand Action” – who are as devoid of “victories” as they are of any history of factual statements on the issue – are trying to claim this as a victory for the gun-grabber movement.  Both are apparently try to exploit this event as a “win” for their hapless groups.

And there’s one more ninny.  Indeed, the big kahuna of Twin Cities lefty ninnies.  More at noon.

Martens and Jane Kay are, as usual – as always – lying.  Neither “Protect MN” nor “Moms Demand Action”, nor any “organized” anti group, had any role or say in this.  Nor a case.

No, the entire decision was over the obvious potential for trouble.

And anyone who claims otherwise is lying, or trying to gin up drama for their personal, political or PR gain, or both.  Most likely both.

But again, more at noon.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

USDA buys food products from eligible vendors, then gives them away to schools and eligible poor people.

The purpose of the program: “The Agricultural Marketing Service’s Commodity Procurement Staff purchase a variety of food products in support of the National School Lunch Program and other food assistance programs. These purchases also help to stabilize prices* in agricultural commodity markets by balancing supply and demand.

*Euphemism for price supports, aka subsidy to food producers.

Lots of foods are available including raisins. Raisins? We need to create an artificial shortage to support higher prices for grape growers? Yes, except one of the growers is pissed the government forces him to hand over his crop and brought a Takings claim. The case went to the Supreme Court which ruled he didn’t have to pay the fine for failing to turn over his crop before he could bring a Constitutional challenge to the law requiring him to turn over his crop or pay a fine. The government didn’t pay for raisins, they took them, to feed the poor. Barak “Raisin Robin Hood” Obama.

The whole system is insane. We buy food and store it in warehouses to make food artificially expensive and therefore more profitable to producers, but then poor people can’t afford food so we truck it around the country and give it to them for free. Stop The Madness! Don’t buy the food, let the market decide how many producers can produce food and still be profitable, let Cub and Rainbow warehouse and ship it, let prices slip so poor people can afford it. The market will take care of everything if we just get the hell out of the way!

Why is that so hard to understand?

Joe Doakes

If you leave out the forced labor (so far) and use of food as a terror weapon, the similarity to the Soviet agriculture plans of the 1930s will make you pound your head on the desk.

I’m less surprised by the fact that James Gandolfini has passed away…

…than by the fact that he was only 51.

He’d seemed “51” for most of the last 20 years.

Sigh.

The left, when it goes on its occasional jag of unearned intellectual superiority, is given to referring to itself as the “Reality-Based” community – as opposed to the conservative “Faith-Based” notion, which the left tends to regard as a quirk at least, a dangerous belief in superstition at worst.

Which gives me a chuckle when I read things like  this op-ed in the Strib from one Melissa Schulte:

Sally asks Suzy over for a play date. Suzy’s mother learns through neighborhood gossip that Sally’s family recently adopted a man-eating Bengal tiger named “Roscoe.”

The foreshadowing could have been more hamhanded, to be fair; she could have named the “tiger” “Pakinheet”. 

Ignoring the advice from animal experts, Sally’s parents have decided not to enroll the family in tiger training due to their busy schedules.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Instead of keeping this known killer in a cage, the family lets it roam freely in the house. …The reason Sally’s parents decided to adopt Roscoe is for protection. They believe that simply owning an untrained beast will ward off any human predators who consider entering the house. Even though they live in a quiet and peaceful neighborhood, they feel one can never be too safe.

In Melissa Schulte’s special little world (where “peaceful neighborhoods” are immune to violent crime, naturally), a firearm is a carnivorous animal with intelligence and appetites of its own

An hour into the play date, the phone rings at Suzy’s house. Her parents answer to the sound of sobbing on the other end. It seems the warnings about Roscoe just fueled Suzy’s curiosity, and she could not resist a look at the beast.

Look – if you own  – a gun, keep it as secure as you need to given  your circumstances.  That’s just common sense.  

Nobody wants to get that call – or be responsible for it. 

But this post isn’t about gun safety.  It’s about how very badly-informed our neighbors are.  Schulte:

Would you believe that nearly 40 percent of American households have a Roscoe in their midst?

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Roscoes,” otherwise known as guns [Ms. Schulte; the American Academy of Ham-fisted Symbolism has revoked your card from over-use – Ed], cause twice as many deaths in young people as does cancer, five times as many as heart disease and 15 times as many as infections.

Which means the American Academy of Pediatrics needs to have its figures audited.  The CDC puts the number around 70 children a year killed by firearm accidents.  Every one was a tragedy, every one could have been avoided – but it’s a tiny fraction of the number killed every year in the swimming pools that “Suzy” swims in, the car that “Suzy’s” parents drive or even from falling off ladders and playground equipment.

Despite the shocking statistics showing that household firearms are infinitely more dangerous to the people inside the home than any outside threat, gun owners still become indignant when the government attempts to moderate their Second Amendment rights.

Actually, we get indignant when newspapers like the Strib broadcast twaddle like the above paragraph without any check.  It is quite simply a lie, devolved from a 1993 study media wrenched out of context, and that in fact showed that provided nobody in the house is an alcoholic, drug addict, or has a criminal record, a firearm is 400 times more likely to deter a crime than hurt someone unjustifiably.

THAT makes us indignant.

Many gun advocates justify their stance by saying the problem is not the gun; the issue is the irresponsible gun owners who leave weapons available to children.

However, without strict laws as to how firearms should be stored in the home, most guns are as unpredictable in their potential to kill as a man-eating animal.

Remember – the left calls the right “superstitious” and “Irrational”. 

More tomorrow.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Uh oh, Snowden has supporters among other whistle-blowers? So he’s factually correct about NSA’s programs?

Nah, rogue agents, all of them. And scalawags, liars and traitors to The First Black President.

Who to believe? Are Conservatives too willing to believe the worst because of Who is in control right now? I doubt it. Especially since as the pressures mount the admissions trickle out. It’s the same story pattern always:

1 it never happened.
2 it probably didn’t happen, but if it did it was an isolated incident by some low-level rogue person in that department/agency/office.
3 it might have happened; but if it did, it was very limited to just one or two rogue persons and it was something that was justified and necessary in any case.
4 it was necessary and LEGAL and everyone knew it and besides it was carefully limited to just what was needed.
5
6
7
8

(escalation of excuses)

17 This is the first Obama and anyone in seats of power have heard anything about it. What is this about again?
18 This is old news, we’ve already addressed it. What difference does it make anyway?
19 We refuse to talk about this anymore because it’s old news, it doesn’t matter, everyone else agreed to it anyway, and it was Bush’s fault.

Joe Doakes

it’s the extension of the old Clinton play book: deny, delay, destroy. B

If every Republican candidate stated as good a case for conservative Republican politics as Louisiana state legislator Elbert Guillory, the GOP would have 3:1 majorities in Congress and all legislatures – maybe 3:2 in New York and California. 

Republicans – take note.

I got this email from a friend of mine who works in a sector that interacts closely with government:

Earlier this year staff members of a Minnesota Congressional Delegation met with workers of a state agency to discuss the sequester. They asked the gathered workers to relate stories of how the sequester was hurting Minnesotans. None of the gathered workers could think of any immediate problems but assured the delegation that they would send along anything they could.

Now lo and behold this story in the Strib.

Mitch, perhaps someone will take up the mantle of “the sequester hurt very few.”

And oh, the tidings of woe the Strib “found”. I’ll let you read it on your own.

Now, I have no hard evidence on which to base my conclusion; just a couple of observations.

First: Journalists rarely stumble upon their own stories. The myth of the old school gumshoe reporter hanging around city hall or the Capitol looking for isolated threads of a story to start pulling does exist – largely in places with Republican politicians. But they get stories fed to them, too, by special interests.

So why did theStribfind tales of sequestration horror that nobody else could find? Because somebody – meaning “some group or organization that either lives off of government, or works to further the politics of those who do” – fed them the story.

Nope, no evidence of that. But I’d bet money.

Australia’s Prime Minster, Julia Gillard, flogs the “Gender War” card…

…with the kind of results the American electorate would do well to heed:

But the ploy has backfired with a poll in Fairfax Media showing male voters are abandoning Gillard and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and there is little sign of more women getting behind her.

The telephone poll of 1,400 voters found that since the last survey a month ago Labor’s standing has continued to slide, led entirely by a seven percent exodus of men.

Under a two-party vote, the conservative opposition would romp home in the September 14 elections with 57 percent (up three points) to 43 percent (down three points) for Labor.

Two possible conclusions:  either 1) there are limits to “war on women” rhetoric, or b) Australian voters are just plain smarter than ours are.

Remember what happens every time the conservative mainstream GOP mixes it up with the “moderates” that have descended into near irrelevance among everyone but the Strib Editorial Board? 

How the media establishment chides the GOP to be more open?  Bigger-tented?  More tolerant of dissent?

Well, at the moment, either does at least part of the mainstream media.

Nick Coleman – who used to be one of those Strib people who audibly pined for the good ol’ days when his Dad was in the Legislature and the GOP was a huge tent covering everyone from moderate DFL suckups to really moderate DFL suckups – is now wanting to start checking ideological IDs. He was reporting from the Tatooine cantina that was the Minneapolis DFL City Convention over the weekend:

Is the #mplsdfl tent too large? EVERYONE is in it, but they don’t agree, don’t get along and — maybe — shouldn’t be in same party.

— NickColeman (@NickColeman) June 16, 2013

Minneapolis has a choice;  five DFL candidates, ranging from crazy to pants-crappingly unhinged…

…and Cam Winton, the DFLer-turned-GOPer running on the “get some value for all those freaking taxes we pay” platform.

If there was ever a time to shock the world, this is it; Cam could use a buck or two, and even some volunteers, if you’re so inclined.

“…I don’t think we’re in Cincinnati anymore!”

Is Doug Kass right about the stock market?

Who knows?  I mean, given the almost-unanimous pollyannaism that’s broken out in the parts of the financial media that get quoted on the MSM, I’d suspect contrarians are right just based on knee-jerk hunchism. 

But when it comes to Twitter, I think he’s got a point; Kass is giving up on the popular social media site:

“Unfortunately, there are many haters in the social blogosphere, who, perhaps because of their own issues, drown out the many good people who want a value-added investment experience by learning more and enjoying a healthy dialogue in real time.”

Twitter has become dominated by people whoarewhat Laura Billings warned bloggers were a decade ago; a combination of raving loners and paid human (give or take) copy-and-paste-bots who clog all discussion with ranting or recirculated drivel. 

“Unfortunately, there are many haters in the social blogosphere, who, perhaps because of their own issues, drown out the many good people who want a value-added investment experience by learning more and enjoying a healthy dialogue in real time.”

Time for a companion book to James Surowiecki’s huge hit of about eight years ago;The Idiocy Of Crowds.

As I’ve noted a few times in this space, the cultural left, regionally and nationally, is in a panic over the news that the libertarian-conservative Koch Brotehrs are pondering buying some newspapers, including the Tribune Group. 

Last week in the MinnPost – a web publication formed by a former Strib publisher which serves largely as an afterparty for an array of former Strib, PiPress and City Pages writers – Eric Black has a story on the potential Koch purchase of theStrib, told in a tone that reminded me of a scary story a parent might tell a fussy toddler to keep them from jumping out of bed:

Businessman Mike Sweeney, currently serving as chairman of the Star Tribune, says it’s the best gig he’s ever had. He says that covering government in a one-party state presents special challenges to a newspaper. He asserts that the paper is living down its old “Red Star” reputation. And he completely rejects the popular canard that the paper’s economic interest in the new Vikings stadium influences its coverage.

Leave aside the patent balderdash of the Vikings reference; it remained to regional conservative blogs to show the gaping holes in the revenue plan for which theStribwas a constant cheerleader. 

I’m more interested in the “Red Star” bit.  Black goes into no details – but his wording implies that Sweeney indicated that there was a “Red Star” reputation to “live down”?

That would be a big admission, coming from a paper whose party line for forty years has been that they are they objective center, and it’s their critics who are the extremists.

It might have been an interesting subject for inquiry, depending on who attended the conversation – but as Black notes…:

 

In an interview with Larry Jacobs at the Humphrey School Tuesday…

…only our media and academic Brahmin “elites” are ever invited to that conversation.

Which may be why the conversation always reaches the same conclusion.

Anyway, on to the chase:

Oh, and Sweeney said that when the current ownership wants to sell the paper – a time that is in the foreseeable future – if the only willing buyers are the Koch brothers, then such a sale could happen.

 Cue the scary music.

The “K” word has been uttered. 

The question arose on a question from the audience, undoubtedly inspired by some recent suggestions that the Kochs might experiment with buying newspapers.

 

“The time is coming when Wayzata Investment Partners [the partnership that owns the biggest share of the Strib] will want to sell. I spent time on it today,” he said. The owners are certainly interested in what price their property will fetch, but they are also mindful that to a city like Minneapolis, a newspaper like the Strib is a “community asset.”

 

“We also have a special role in the community,” Sweeney said. He said “community asset” more than once. I assume that’s supposed to imply that owners would allow certain non-financial considerations to enter their thinking.

 

His attempt to imply what he wasn’t willing to say caused Jacobs to tell him that he was leaving the possibility of a Koch purchase “up in the air.” So Sweeney tried to leave it at this: When the owners are ready to sell, if the only offer they get comes from the Koch Brothers, “it could happen.”

 

You can take that how you choose. My best guess is that that’s something of a warning to other potential buyers not to put the current accidental owners in that position.

There’s so much to talk about in those five grafs:

What Community? – Sweeney asserts a statement that is itself a question that the entire regional left begs; the Strib is an asset to the community. 

The obvious response is – no, it’s not, it’s a business, albeit one that’s enjoyed a few decades as the senior partner in a duopoly in a dying industry – someone needs to ask the question “so what part of the paper does Sweeney consider to be the “community asset?””. 

So what’s the asset?:  Is it the existence of a newspaper, period?  Well, a Koch Brothers purchase would probably put that existence on firmer ground, even if they didn’t change a single thing.  And if, as seems likely, they do as Fox News did – run a straight news operation with an overtly conservative editorial board and columnist slate, more or less exactly the opposite of the Strib we’ve known this past fifty years – then voila, there’d be no change!

But it’s not the existence of a newspaper that matters to them; it’s the existence of a center-left newspaper with an editorial board and columnist bullpent  and newsroom culture that carries the water for the soft-left DFL establishment in this state, that’s the important part.   That is the only thing threatened by a hypothetical Koch takeover – in the same way that Abraham Lincoln’s head was the only thing John Wilkes Booth ruined in the production at the Ford Theater.

A Community Let Down:  No surprise here; I think that if the Strib wants to claim to be a “community asset”, it has a tough hill to climb. 

But let’s take Sweeney and Black at their words; let’s say the Strib is a community benefit. 

So what?

It’s a business.  Romantic (and wrong) notions that the Strib ever served a higher purpose are subject to all sorts of debates among journalists and news consumers – but Sweeney has a fiduciary responsibility to his investors to get the best return he can.

It was the humblest and most obscure among the DFL’s orgy of tax pushes this past session. 

And it may be the one that has the broadest impact fastest

The DFL imposed a tax on warehouse services this past session; basically, if it goes into a warehouse, you pay for it.  And pay.  And pay. 

And Minnesota businesses are not amused:

With a warehousing services tax looming next spring, Rochester businessman Eric Lawrence is rethinking the company’s expansion plans.

That means “not hiring any more people”.  Back to McDonalds, proles – and remember, it’s for A Better Minnesota!

The president and CEO of Red Wing-basedLawrence Transportation Company had been looking to build a new warehouse facility in Winona but tapped the brakes on the plan. While the warehousing tax isn’t the sole reason for delaying construction, he said it is a major factor.

“I want to grow this business. I want to offer the services and have the space to do it, but it’s not worth the risk,” he said.

With Hudson, Prescott and La Crosse just across the river and sharing the same (or better) transportation links that Red Wing has?  

The DFL-led Legislature approved extending Minnesota’s sales tax to commercial warehousing services last month. The proposal is expected to generate nearly $100 million for the state per year once it takes effect April 1, 2014.

It won’t, of course.   Ripping 6.75% plus out of the bottom line of the warehousers – which is not an especially high-margin business to begin with – makes it a no-brainer for any company.  

Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, said during a recent visit to Rochester that the warehouse tax enabled lawmakers to repeal a requirement cities and counties pay state sales taxes — a cost that got passed on to property taxpayers. It also helped fund an upfront refund for business capital equipment purchases.

“We thought (the warehousing tax) was a business-to-business service that wouldn’t harm economic growth, but we put it in effect in April so we could assess what potential issues that are with it because we’ve never had it before, and if there are some ramifications, there will be time to make some corrections to it,” Bakk said. “But right now, today, I don’t see it having a hindrance on economic output.”

“I don’t see it having an impact”. 

This is from the leader of a party that thinks “supply chain” is something you pay $20 extra for at Deja Vu. 

Critics disagree. They argue the tax will encourage Minnesota companies to warehouse their products in other states…Among the businesses concerned about the tax is Red Wing Shoes. The company declined to provide comment for this article. But in an interview with the Star Tribune’s Neal St. Anthony, Red Wing Shoes President Dave Murphy said the company has decided to delay plans for a new $20 million distribution center in Red Wing as a result of the tax.

I know of one major company in Greater Minnesota with a very large warehouse component that has been quietly renting up all the warehouses it can find in a neighboring lower-tax state (with better transportation connections and easier building permitting to boot); if that company leaves, it will gut the job market in its neighborhood.

It’s not just the warehouse tax that’s got them shopping.  But every little bit hurts, when you’re trying to be competitive with surrounding states thatjust plain get it – they understand competition, having spent the past forty years competing with their fat ‘n happy neighbor at the top of the Mississippi River. 

So when your warehouse gig moves off to Superior or Grand Forks or La Crosse, just remember – it’s For A Better Minnesota!

Seven dead and many injured in the city that actually has the gun laws that Heather Martens, Jane Kay and Michael Paymar dream about:

. Seven people were killed and at least 32 others were shot in violence that plagued Chicago over Father’s Day weekend.
Six of the fatalities and 13 other shootings occurred overnight Saturday leading into Father’s Day, including the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy.
On the Southwest Side, five people were shot, one fatally, in two shootings in the Little Village neighborhood.
At 10:50 p.m. Saturday 21-year-old Ricardo Herrera was killed and two others were shot in the 2500 block of South Ridgeway Avenue, police said.

But the kids are all black, so they don’t matter to Twin Cities gun grabbers.

If only they liked more like future NPR execs, right?

One of the most important primers there is when it comes to explaining and understanding modern political dynamics is Berg’s Seventh Law:  “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”

It’s a simple law – and yet it has applications all over our society’s political interactions.

I thought I’d spell out a few real-world applications of Berg’s Seventh Law, the better to help you recognize examples on your own.

I’ve written about this in the past.  It’s worth another visit.

I’m very ambivalent about Father’s Day.  I used to say I was of two minds – but it’s more like three minds these days.

On the one hand, I’m thankful for the father I have.  My dad was just about the best father a guy could ask for (and still is), in just about every way.  The part I didn’t appreciate about him until I had older kids of my own?  Most guys  learn about being a father, for better or worse, from their own fathers.  My grandfather died when my Dad was five, though.  My grandma raised Dad, and as good a job as she did, she wasn’t a father.  Fathers bring different things to their children than mothers do – including the whole “How to be a dad” thing.  So Dad was kinda winging it.  And I’d like to think that, in the immortal words of Dr. Perry Cox, “he could have done a lot worse”.  Part of the spirit of Father’s Day for me is acknowleding him.  So thanks, Dad!

As to me?  Having kids, and getting to raise them, was the most important thing in my life.  Still is.  And up through about age 11, it was almost purely wonderful and rewarding.  Now, getting my kids through their teenage years and into their twenties has been – I’ll be diplomatic – a challenge.  But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?  On that level, Father’s Day means saying “We survived another year!”.  And that’s not so bad. 

The third thing, though?  Father’s Day makes me angry. 

Our society systematically devalues fatherhood.  It’s the most flagrant in our current urban culture, where a strong majority of babies are born into fatherless homes, where teachers are reporting an epidemic of risk-averse kids afraid to go outside because they’re being raised by risk-averse single women, where entire generations of  young men are growing up with no masculine role models in their lives until they get into their teens – when all the role models are bad. 

But it’s not just in the neighborhood.  It’s all over our society.  Hollywood and Madison Avenue’s model for the mainstream father is Homer Simpson – incompetent, borderline-depraved, saved only by his preternaturally competent, all-enduring and (at least on TV ads) improbably out-of-his-league wife (and sometimes daughter and, occasionally sons before they get the lobotomy that seems to go along with fatherhood in that special little world). 

The current trend in feminist-dominated academia echoes Margaret Mead’s quip from fifty years ago – “men are a biological necessity and a social accident”.  The education system is increasingly marginalizing boys and men of all ages; medicating their masculine traits and treating them as social disorders, shunting boys who refuse to comply and conform onto the “Special Ed” track, making “education” a punitive death march for boys who don’t get the message “go along, get along, conform, keep your butt in the seat and speak when spoken to”.  And that policy is bearing rancid fruit; before long, women will outnumber men in higher education 3:2, with the margin even more grotesque in Education (ensuring the vicious cycle will continue) and the social “sciences” (ditto). 

And while the situation has improved in recent years in many states, the fact is that for many men, “fatherhood” is a legal state of eternal debt and denial; ejected from any meaningful presence in their childrens’ lives by a court system that spent a few decades acting as an agent of Big Feminism and county social service bureaucracies that still largely do, men are relegated to the role of occasional visitors and ATM machines and, often, much worse; a shocking percentage of “domestic abuse” allegations are brought purely to manipulate the system during divorce actions. 

So for a fair chunk of the fathers in our society, “Father’s Day” is a cruel mockery.  And it’s a symptom of the current system that I find I need to hasten to add “I’m not talking about the abusive ones, or the fathers that are nothing more than sperm donors”, as if they’re the majority. 

I focus on the first two views of the holiday, because I’m a lucky guy on both counts.  But let’s be mindful, on this most tongue-in-cheek and pollyannish of all the Hallmark Holidays, that there’s another side to the story.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

to St. Paul, what will we sell to keep the lights on?

We don’t have Tiffany stained glass windows to sell out of our City Hall, as Duluth did.

Joe Doakes

Saint Paulians – feel free to sound off with ideas!

Me?  I suggest selling off Saint Anthony Park.  The whole neighborhood.  Turn it into a theme park; “Limo Liberal La-La Land!”

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Rep. Keith Ellison is trying to learn about business because he has no idea how it works or why.

That’s a common problem with Democrats. At least he’s making an effort. But he picked the most liberal “Republican” possible to advise him. And he is still pushing the same tired crap: more unions, no Social Security “cuts” and taxes galore. Socialism, with an MBA, is still socialism.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

That could be a new corollary to Berg’s Eleventh Law (“The conservative liberals “respect” for their “conservative principles” will the the one that has the least chance of ever getting elected.”)  Perhaps “The Ellison Corollary to Berg’s Eleventh Law:  The “Republican” that liberals turn to for their information on “conservative” issues will be the least conservative Republican available”.

Could also be called the Arne Carlson corollary.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is just too much.

And now, the terrorists have won.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Registered sex offenders to live on Charles Avenue [A street a few block north of University, through the Midway, Frogtown and the North End of Saint Paul – Ed]. On the new bike-and-pedestrian-friendly part of the street.

 

Seems odd to be slowing down potential victims just in front of the predator’s house but then, I‘m not an urban planner.

 

Joe Doakes

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Here’s a boring little article about a minor accounting change, but I can imagine the headlines:

Conservative version: Homeland Security held accountable, must report before buying more ammunition.

Liberal version: House Republicans leave American children defenseless against terror.

Joe doakes

Oddly, Nick Coleman and Alex Jones’ versions would both go “Connect The Dots, People!”

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hillary’s State Department is offering millions of dollars in rewards for information leading to the arrest and capture of terrorists who blew up stuff . . . in Africa.

I don’t give a crap about Africans blowing up Africans. Give ME the seven million dollars.

Joe Doakes

Remember when liberals complained about the US being “the world’s policeman?”

Them either.

Joe Doakes emails:

Plainly, we need to focus our gun control efforts on East Side teens cravingchicken wings.  Neither one is old enough to possess a handgun.  So how’d they pass the background check?

You need to be able to answer that question to make your pet legislation sensible.  Otherwise, it’s just one more law in a long string of laws broken by these two, and others like them.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

The answer is this; um, if the law-abiding have to pass background checks, there’ll be no time to sell guns to teenagers?  I think?