In Triangle Park, The Lights Are Dim, The Statues Grin

Sick of the alpaca-wearing, volvo-driving, relentlessly-self-righteous crowd having all the fun?

Join us at a counterprotest this coming Saturday, to join with fellow anti-terror, pro-troops Americans to counterprotest the “peace” rally in Saint Paul.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.  The park is ours from 10AM on.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

Join Us Saturday

On this, the sixth anniversary of the attack that started it all, please join us – the Twin Cities’ anti-surrender, anti-appeasement, anti-genocide community – at a counterprotest this coming Saturday.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

Counterprotest Saturday

Join the Twin Cities’ anti-surrender community at a counterprotest at the “peace” march this coming Saturday.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here)

The park is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

Counterprotest

A group of people who support the troops, and want the world to know that not all of the Twin Cities agrees with the anti-war, pro-surrender agenda, will be staging a counterprotest at the “peace” march on September 15.

The counterprotesters will gather and demonstrate at Triangle Park in Saint Paul (the triangle-shaped block east of the linked map) at the corner of Marshall Avenue and John Ireland Boulevard.   (For an aerial view, click here – it’s one of Saint Paul’s coolest places, in a lot of ways)

The park – a memorial to Minnesotans who served in the Civil War – is located a block north of the Cathedral of Saint Paul and east of John Ireland Boulevard (the road that connects the Cathedral and the Capitol) across from Saint Paul College.  It is Saint Paul Parks property, and is reserved for the use of counterprotesters during the time of the march.

Interested in attending?  Drop us a line at the email address “demonstrationwatch”, at Yahoo.com. 

Imprimatur

Matt Abe (who regularly writes at Northstar Liberty) notes a bit of a milestone for the NARN (Volume III “The Final Word” in this case) over on True North today…:

 On last Saturday’s Northern Alliance Radio Network show, “The Final Word” with King Banaian and Michael Brodkorb (broadcast on AM 1280 The Patriot), Brian Sullivan endorsed Mitt Romney for president.

…and explains why it’s significant for those new to the politics of our swingy state:

Sullivan, the current Republican National Committeeman from Minnesota, ran against Tim Pawlenty for the Republican endorsement for governor in 2002, which culminated in a legendary, overnight ballot battle royale (ask me to tell you about it someday, it was my first state convention and I was a Sullivan delegate). He has maintained a behind-the-scenes profile since then, with occasional appearances on Almanac as the conservative voice on the political panel. In spite of his unsuccessful endorsement bid, Sullivan is still a favorite son among many Minnesota conservatives.

Matt is right – and also too parsimonious with the details.  Brian Sullivan played the most important role in Minnesota politics that I’ve seen performed by a non-elected official or candidate; his strong, well-organized drive for the nomination forced Tim Pawlenty – theretofore a fairly moderate, pragmatic legislative fixer – to the right.  I think it’s fair to say that without Brian Sullivan, there’d have been no “No New Taxes” pledge, and none of of the fallout (almost all beneficial) from it.

So Sullivan’s endorsement carries some weight in this state, especially on the eve of Fred Thompson’s presumed entry into the presidential race this week. Sullivan said that for him, it came down to two candidates, Romney and Thompson.

“I feel both are good conservatives,” said Sullivan, “that would support the principles that I believe in, and I think that many conservatives in Minnesota believe in, it came down to who would I hire? Who is it that has actually accomplished something, made a difference, made progress against tough goals, it’s Romney.”

Matt also catches one wry irony:

“In some ways I think that Thompson has become the Republican Party’s [Barack] Obama, in the sense that not that much is known about him, he’s clearly a very good speaker, he’s an appealing personality, but his track record as a Senator, you could argue, isn’t very strong…he’s going to have to be able to be more than just a good candidate, but actually convince folks that he can lead the charge.”

Interestingly, aside from his business experience, Sullivan’s critics made much the same arguements in 2002 about Sullivan, who never held elected office.

Matt notes that many higher-ups in the MNGOP seem to be following the herd to Romney – which is at least an encouraging sign that the front office is starting to back away from its commitments to McCain that go back about a year or so:

Brodkorb reported that joining Sullivan in endorsing Romney this week were former Republican National Committeepersons Evie Axdahl, Jack Meeks, and Republican Party of Minnesota Treasurer Tony Sutton.

Go to TN and read the whole thing.

Of Party and Principle

The other day, commenter J. Ewing – who is a frequent dissident from this forum’s dominant paradigm – left a comment in my thread about the launch of True North:

But what I just don’t get is how, without taking a “principled stand” that candidates of one party (say, for example, the GOP) will do a better job of advancing your principles than those of another party.

The answer is, of course, that True North is not “non-partisan”.  We are overtly partisan; our “party” is First-Principles-based Conservatism.  Not the GOP. 

A simple look at the roster of bloggers writing for True North should tell the tale; True North includes a list of people who are conservative activists and Republican sympathizers, and even functionaries. 

But the blog is not, and emphatically will never be, an organ of the GOP. The GOP needs its feet held in the fire when it comes to the First Principles that drive us, no different than the DFL (only the DFL is much farther-gone). 

Looking at the roster of contributors, it’s pretty obvious that most of us are Republicans of one form or another, and all of us are conservatives. Most of us are Republicans because we believe in those first principles, and that the GOP (at its best, anyway – and don’t all of us join political parties because of the best they represent?) best supports them.

So we’re explicitly partisan.  We are just not part of the Republican party.

There are two reasons to declare yourself or your organization “non-partisan”:

  1. To exercise, with integrity, an intent to disavow  politcal postures of any sort.  This is the philosophy of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers, which actively eschews politics (even though most of its members are conservatives) in order to remain open to bloggers of all types.
  2. To disingenuously claim non-partisanship to make an expressly partisan agenda seem benign, like “Growth for Justice” and its contributors

To do so – for a group of active, gleefully unrepentant conservatives – would be as disingenuous as Joel Kramer’s claims of centricity.

Mr. Ewing continues:

Yes, you can do a heck of a good job being “nonpartisan and purely educational,” as the Taxpayers League is, but at some point you need to start putting the education into an actual practicum– “field work”– to get anything done, right? What’s wrong with partisanship, if it gets you where you want to go?

And that’s what True North is really all about; making the turn from opinion to action.

But that comes a little later.

Epilogue

Over at TN, Swiftee notes a sad event involving an involuntarily-key figure in the history of the Twin Cities center-right blogosphere…:

 It seems that [former Saint Paul school principal Zelma] Wiley has passed away…I’d like to express my sincere sympathies to the family of Zelma Wiley.

…and the “columnist” who dragged her into the public eye:

 I firmly believe that she had the best interests of her students in mind when she agreed to work with Nick Coleman, She could not have known that Nick had a well deserved reputation of a shameless panderer and prevaricator and I don’t think that she deserved the abuse that rightfully belonged to Coleman.

 

My condolences to Ms. Wiley’s family; she was the principal of my daughter’s first school, and in my conversations with her she was always a courteous person who, to be fair, inherited a very difficult task (Maxfield is in one of St. Paul’s worst neighborhoods), and did the very best she could.

Taken On Faith

Bob Collins at Polinaut notes the launch of two politics-oriented blogs this past week:

…tomorrow, as near as I can tell, a bunch of conservative bloggers are adding True North to their repertoire. I believe the link — when it debuts on Saturday, will be here.

Thanks for the hat tip, Bob!

However, I had to comment on this next bit:

Eric Black, the high priest of political blogging in Minnesota (formerly The Big Question) has launched Eric Black Ink.

Well, kudos to Mr. Black, with whom I disagree on much political, but for whom I have the utmost regard. 

But Bob – “high priest” of Minnesota poliblogging?

I mean, maybe if John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Ed Morrissey and Michael Brodkorb are respectively the Dalai Lama, Pope, Archbishop and Billy Graham of Minnesota political blogging.  Maybe.

Otherwise…?

Launching True North

Today’s the big launch for True North. 

We’re a blog.

Perhaps you’ve heard; there are 70 million blogs out there. You might be forgiven for asking: “Why another?”

The answer: because it’s needed.

Minnesota is a tough place to be a Republican; it’s tougher still to be a first-principles based, center-right conservative. We face a media and DFL machine that is huge, well-funded, and has insinuated over the past three or four generations into every corner of Minnesota life.

And yet for all of that, we – underfunded, working mostly as volunteers – have twice brought this state to the tipping point, from “purple” to the ragged brink of “red”. In five straight elections, from ’98 to ’06, Minnesota’s volunteers took on the paid, plutocrat-propped minions of the DFL on the streets, in the community centers, and finally at the polling places. And except for the national debacle of ’06, we gave MUCH better than we got. We turned “liberal” Minnesota into a swing state.

And it’s been a lot of work. Minnesota’s volunteers are tired. They’ve been asked a lot. But they’ve delivered.

Among those volunteers have been Minnesota’s center-right bloggers. Minnesota’s center-right has, since 2004, fostered a blog community that is the nation’s most vibrant, smart and influential.

And they’ve put in a lot of work. And they’re tired, too.

But it’s another season. And someone needs to do their bit to help focus those bloggers, that alternative media, those many many volunteers in precincts and wards across this state, to shake off the fatigue, and ride once more to the sound of the guns; like bagpiper Mike Millin leading Lord Lovat’s troops across Sword Beach on D-Day with the skirl of his highland pipes, someone’s gotta fly that flag and walk toward the fight , so that everyone else can see, grit their teeth, and follow along.

That’s why we started this blog. What makes us think that “True North” is guaranteed to succeed? Simple. It’s a blog. There are no guarantees. But we’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right people:

True North has a bunch of Minnesota’s finest center-right bloggers and other pundits. These are people who’ve waved Minnesota’s cultural barometer in the world’s face for years, now, and made the world listen. We have some people with INCREDIBLY good insights on board.We are living in a situation that is ripe for this type of blog. We face a huge-profile Senate race, one that will pit Hollywood (and Kenwood) against Main Street.

We are a Purple State with a governor that is a contender to go to Washington. We are going to be hosting a national convention (and a few thousand demonstrators in the bargain), which will put our state and our people on the world’s front pages. And the Minnesota House in the balance, as Minnesota wakes up from the ’06 election, sees what the DFL has tried to abscond with, and quietly tries to chew its arm off to avoid waking the Democrats up; we could flip the State House, and possibly the US House, back to the GOP.

The question isn’t “why do this blog”. The question is “could we do without it?” Hope you can join us. It’s going to be wildest year of our lives, so far.

(Cross-posted on True North)

True North

Today’s the big debut:

True North Teaser

About the time this article publishes, we’ll be giving True North its big sendoff at the State Fair (tune in on AM1280 The Patriot). 

Some people have asked – “why another conservative blog?”  (Others, rather than asking, have tried to go all Chloe on us.   Really, guys – less drama, please?)

But as the Democrats try to wheedle the state into holding a special session to repair the bridge (and increase Local Government Aid and put a state trooper at every intersection and raise all of southern Minnesota twelve feet and increase education funding and built a light-retaining wall around Nicollet Island and…) and trucks full of Hollywood money are rumbling up I90 to Al Franken’s office and wannabe thugboyz and riotgrrls are measuring manhole covers in Saint Paul for next year’s convention and plutocrats pour money into buying a left-leaning alternative media presence in this state, it’s time for us – the state’s center-right alternative media – to step things up.

True North is just another blog, in a sense.  It’s true. 

It’s also going to be the online equivalent of what Keegans is for the non-partisan Minnesota Organization of Bloggers; a place to get together; to talk; to organize things.

It’s not an organ of the state GOP.  Far from it.  While probably 95% of the votes I’ve cast since age 20 have gone to Republicans (and that is, naturally, a conservative estimate), it’s because the GOP is the only party that even pays lip service to the principles I care about; in many other ways, the State GOP and some of the Congressional District party organizations are as much the problem as they are the solution. 

No.  True North is rigorously independent of all parties.  It is allied purely to first principles: from the Manifesto…:

  • Liberty: lower taxes, less (and more sensible) regulation, and a focus on freedom, whether economic, intellectual or political.
  • Prosperity: the promotion of the freedom of the market to bring the most opportunity to the most people, and the promotion of merit that drives this prosperity.
  • Security: the defense of this nation from enemies abroad, the protection of its citizens from crime and criminals at home, and the security of our borders.
  • Culture: The recognition that America is a melting pot that welcomes newcomers who come with a desire to join in our novel experiment, enjoy freedom, wealth and a brotherhood of common principle, rather than view it as a candy store to be plundered.
  • Limited Government: A government that is focusing on whether you’re smoking or eating Big Macs is a government that has too much time, money and power on its hands.
  • Family: the belief that government needs to uphold, rather than undercut, the basic building block of all healthy societies, the family.

True North is a center for writing and discussing these principles.

Kind of like every other blog.  Yepper.

But it’s also a place to network.  To organize.  To counter George Soros’ and Laurie David’s millions with the things Minnesota conservatives do have plenty of.

Ideas.

Energy.

Commitment.

Passion for the cause.

This next 14 months are going to be an amazing time.  True North seeks to chronicle that time – and, to the extent that a bunch of volunteers in the pajamas sitting behind keyboard in their basements can, to drive that time.

So join us!

George Soros’ Crack Investigative Journalists Strike Again

Joe Bodell – RentABlogger with SorosTemps “citizen journalist” at the Minnesota Monitor – has found a major mystery.

But first:

 

OK.  Where were we?

Oh, yeah.  Crack citizen journalist Joe Bodell has found himself a mystery to try to solve:

So what is looktruenorth.com?  If you go to the website, you get a message from the Joomla software running that the site is down for maintenance.  But digging a little deeper (legally and without trickery, of course) reveals at least a few details

nslookup looktruenorth.com
Server:  cns.westlandrdc.mi.michigan.comcast.net
Address:  68.87.77.130Non-authoritative answer:
Name:  looktruenorth.com
Address:  74.53.51.52

68.87.77.130 doesn’t do much — it’s owned by Comcast out in Michigan, and doesn’t have a public-facing website associated with it.  However, plug 74.53.51.52 into your web browser, and what do you get?  Whaddaya know, a Minnesota-based conservative group blog known as FreedomDogs.com.  Although an nslookup search on freedomdogs.com reveals a different non-authoritative answer, the same primary server at IP address 68.87.77.130 appears in the results as well.

Bodell proceeds to do everything but…

Wait a minute…:

True North Teaser

…Sorry.  had to get that out of the way.

Bodell then goes all Chloe O’Brien on us, trying to figure out exactly what True North and its domain “looktruenorth.com” are all about.

Hmmm.

Now, if I were a “citzen journalist” on the payroll of a mighty news outlet like the Minnesota Monitor, where would I go to try to get to the bottom of this mystery?

When one is reporting a tricky story like this, one needs to look carefully for signs – sometimes very, very subtle ones…

 

…that someone is “in the know” about the conspiracy mystery.  Sometimes, when you do that, approaching them – this is almost indistinguishable from magic, to the non-“citizen journalist”, but bear with me – with a “question” might actually get you some answers.

So think, Joe.  Think hard.

True North

Is there anyone out there, any faint hint you can find that someone might perhaps have some information about the story?

Think, Joe Bodell.  Set the blender of that finely-honed citizenjournalistic mind on “Puree”, and think hardWho could you possibly simply ask for details about True North?

The truth is out there!

True North Teaser

It is.  Somewhere.

It just takes superhuman tenacity along with otherworldly investigative skill.

I know you’re up to it.

Two Days

I’ve gotten involved in a new project.  It’s an incredibly exciting experiment.

True North Teaser

And it launches on Saturday!

What on earth am I talking about?

Tune in at 2:30 on Saturday on the NARN broadcast.   

More tomorrow

The Sound Of The Guns, Part II

Last week, I wrote that conservative activists are tired; as Gary Miller wrote, they’ve been ridden hard and put away wet for five straight election cycles now.  It puts a strain on people, their finances, their families, their real lives.

My article sounded downbeat.  It probably was. 

Of course, I knew there was more to come.  The good news and the bad news: the future of this state once again depends on it.  We’ve seen exactly how stark this state’s choice is; the last legislative session, the DFL’s “your money or your life” hysteria, the bridge collapse and DFL’s schizophrenic response (lurching drunkenly from demanding more money to trying to indict Tim Pawlenty for murder), the miasma of Minneapolis show the mistake the voters made.  And like the morning after a dumb one-night-stand, the state is starting to wake up to the mistake it made last November.

My job – our job – is to make them want to chew their arm off rather than wake them up for the next session.

In my homage to the “Class of ’04” – the raft of great bloggers that got into the racket about this time  three years ago – I noted that this city is blessed with the most vibrant, intelligent, on-the-ball center-right blogging community anywhere in the country.  Anywhere in the blogosphere.  And like most groups of conservatives, it is an organic, self-forming, un-directed mass – a free association of equals.

And so it should stay.

But as we approach yet another “Must Kick Ass” election, we – the Upper Midwest’s center right, freedom-loving, hard-working, blog-for-the-love-of-blogging independent alternative media – need to roust ourselves from our weary hibernation.  And maybe focus just a bit.

Because this year, there is more Ass to kick than ever.

And like Bill Millin on Sword Beach, a group of us are going to start moving toward the breach. 

More – much more – on that next week.

The Sound Of The Guns

It’s been a hard year for a lot of conservative activists – including bloggers.

Remember, especially in Minnesota, the GOP relies on volunteers to do most of its grunt-level organizing, sign-posting, call-banking and door-knocking – the stuff for which the DFL pays a small army of “activists”. 

And each and every campaign in recent memory – 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 – has been a “Make Or Break” campaign for the Minnesota GOP; in each election, Minnesota flirted with purplehood; Minnesota’s legacy as a big-L “liberal” state hung in the balance, and held on by a thread. 

For Minnesota’s conservative volunteers, for four straight election cycles, it was “just one more big push”.  And they delivered; they turned out in droves; they worked countless hours; like the patriots that won this country’s independence, they devoted hours and weeks of their lived for the pure love of the cause; the Democrats’ paid help, like a horde of Hessians, showed up because that’s where the money was. 

And they worked wonders.  They got the word out.  But for the Ventura fluke, they’d have gotten Norm Coleman into the governor’s mansion in 1998; they contributed mightily to his performance against Wellstone, before the late Senator’s death; they almost pulled off what a generation ago would have been unthinkable – putting Minnesota in the Red column, twice. 

And they’re tired.  Some of them are very, very burned out.  I’ve talked with some of them, men and women with families and day jobs and lives, who’ve put all of them to some degree aside every two years for going on a decade now. 

And some of them don’t know that they can do it again.

It’s similar among bloggers.  The “Class of ’04” – the surge of center-right blogs and writers that kicked off during the ’04 campaign – was, and remains, the most dynamic group of political bloggers in the US.  But you could feel a collective fatigue, in some ways, after the ’06 elections.  Many of the ’04 blogs went dormant; some of the bloggers flamed out (although the MOB’s attrition is lower, I suspect, than for just about any other group of 100-odd blogs you can find); others, tired of having to churn stuff out every day, dropped their own blogs to join one the big superblogs (Freedom Dogs, Anti-Strib, TvM) that are positioned to be so very important in this next go-round.  I know I took a step back from politics for a while after the election, and I’m still not entirely back into it.

Yet.

But that’s going to have to change.  There’s a new election season coming up, and it’s going to be huge – even without  the Republican National Convention and the hordes of mischievous pranksters following it to Saint Paul next September.  It’s going to be a donnybrook, on the state and federal levels, here in Minnesota.  The Presidential context will once again have Minnesota teetering on the brink of Red and Blue, and our ten electoral votes are mighty tempting to both parties.  The Senate race will be the dirtiest in Minnesota history, and the ACORN volunteers will be floating down our streets on waves of George Soros’ money.  In Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty stood athwart the flood of DFL tax-‘n-spend proposals like the Finns at Suomussalmi, outfoxing and outmaneuvering his bovine, lumpen enemies and their “All Your Money Is Ours!” platform.  The Dems’ majority in the House is built on sand, with a bunch of seats held by DFLers who won by paper-thin margins in traditionally-GOP-leaning districts; expect them to pour on the money, the dirt, and the media play to keep it that way. 

So the GOP is going to have to call on the things that really make it a contender in this next election; its’ strength in the parts of this state that actually pay the way; its volunteers that make it competitive everywhere; and finally, the alternative media, blogs and talk radio.

Who’s going to pull that all together?

Well, stay tuned.