Shot in the Dark

Tag: Esme Murphy

  • Privacy

    Esme “Rabid Bulldog” Murphy, the dowager dean of Minnesota political reporters and tenacious, utterly impartial reporter on all things political in the state of Minnesota, who has never, ever been fairly or accurately accused of softballing DFLers, twote in re Rep. John “Burn Hugo Down” Thompson and allegations that he snuck out of a not-generally…

  • This Is What Screwed Looks Like

    Governor Walz yesterday morning, as he got ready to head into the studio for his ritual toenail-painting with Esme Murphy: Ever notice how the press never cares about civil rights being trashed until its their civil rights being trashed? He’s wrong, of course. A press that holds power accountable is “foundational to democracy”. So we’re…

  • Hometown Boy Makes Good Idiot Of Self

    The good news: After hearing Ben Shapiro roasting Rupar last week on his radio show, I have to say it’s been amazing seeing that more people nationwide are learning what we in the Twin Cities have known for most of a decade: that City Pages alum and Vox “writer” Aaron Rupar is a really terrible…

  • Imbalance

    Bob Collins’s descent into madness notwithstanding, Minnesota Public Radio is in general the best, least systematically biased newsrooms in the Twin CIties. It’s a low bar, but they get over it by a hair or two. On a good day or the right issue, Tom Hauser at Channel 5 might join ’em above the bar…

  • Will Esme Murphy Call It A “Hate Crime?”

    And it started as such a big day for A-Klo, who shocked the world by winning the endorsement of the Star Tribune’s editorial board, a group composed of people who used to get blackout drunk with her father. There are no words to describe our amazement that the Strib – a paper that’s served not…

  • Cafeteria American

    I had the rare treat of listening to the utterly ironically named “MPR News with Keri Miller” earlier this week.  And by “treat” I meant “update of the notion that Keri Miller is the one “journalist” in the Twin Cities that’d be ill-advised to tell Esme Murphy “dial back the shilling for the DFL and…

  • Why We Need Money In Politics

    If you can’t get the media to do anything but paint Democrats’ toenails on the air,  you have to get your own media to do it for you. Of course, the conservative media that does exist – talk radio – largely reaches an echo chamber.  A smart, superlative echo chamber, but the proverbial choir nonetheless. Doug Wardlow…

  • Evidence In The Affirmative

    Last week, we reported that a KSTP/Survey USA poll shows Stewart Mills leading Rick Nolan by eight points. As we’ve noted for years and years, polls are deeply imperfect (sorry, Nate Silver), and there’s only one poll that matters, and it’s coming up two weeks from tomorrow. But if there were any evidence needed that…

  • Media Lip Prints on Mark Dayton’s Butt, Part III

    Yesterday and Monday, we went over the chronology of the last-minute negotiations and back-and-forth leading up to the State Government shutdown, which started seventeen months ago last night.  The abbreviated time-line: On June 29, the GOP made an offer.  It traded giving some ground on revenue for some movement on social issues. On the morning…

  • Media Lip-Prints On Mark Dayton’s Butt, Part II

    Seventeen months ago yesterday, in the midst of negotiations about the budget, the GOP-led Legislature sent Governor Dayton a proposed budget.  It offered some concessions on revenue, and asked for some ground on social issues. First thing the next morning, June 30 – 17 months ago today – the DFL came out with a counter-offer. Labeled the…

  • Media Lip-Prints On Mark Dayton’s Butt, Part I

    The DFL – and, more accurately, its’ big-money PR operation “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” – have been trying to repeat a couple of Big Lies often enough that, over the course of the next two years, a plurality of Minnesotans agree with them. Again. One of them is the myth of the “do-nothing legislature”.…

  • The 2011 Shootie Awards!

    It’s time once again for that grand tradition in Twin Cities blogging; it’s the sixth-annual, 2011 edition of the Shootie Awards.  These awards commend the worst – and, ever-so-rarely, the best – in Twin Cities (usually-but-not-always alternative) media. And we’ll kick off the awards with the first statuette: The Walter Winchell Award For Cool, Dispassionate…

  • A Good Question In Dire Need Of An Answer

    I’ve asked myself – when I’m not busy lampooning the demonstrations and their overkill media coverage – why are the Twin Cities media covering “Occupy Twin Cities” as lavishly as they are? FInally, Jason DeRusha from WCCO asks the same question: Reg Chapman and I were talking in the newsroom last night about how the coverage of…

  • Dear Chris Cilizza: All Is Forgiven

    To:  Chris Cilizza From: Mitch Berg Re: Durr. Mr. Cilizza: In the past, I have criticized your “best blogs” lists for being myopic assortments of blogs driven mostly by fanboy response. Then I saw “CBS Minnesota”‘s – that’d be WCCO’s – assortment of blogs in their “Most Valuable Blogger” awards. Now, I don’t much care…

  • Another For The Hall Of Fame

    Minnesota politicans – DFLers all – have blessed the rest of us with three quotes that sum up the difference between conservative and “progressive” politics – and, indeed, the evil of progressivism – more concisely and starkly than all of the Poli Sci PhDs in the world have done through all of history. Back in…

  • Fearless Predictions

    I have a couple of predictions for you. Prediction 1:  Polled To Death – Take this to the bank:  sometime before July 1, the Strib will run another “Minnesota Poll” in re the shutdown. The poll’s headlines will be within one rhetorical standard deviation of  “65% of Minnesotans Favor Compromise On Budget Impasse”. The crosstabs,…

  • J’Accuse, 2011

    Yet again, as we watch the political contortions of Anthony Weiner, we see the great political truism; it’s not the act, it’s the cover-up. And as we’ve seen over and over and over again, there’s nothing the media likes more than unravelling a coverup.  Of a Republican (or a Democrat who, like Weiner, has been…

  • Chanting Points Memo: “Compromise”

    Dutifully, the Strib carries the short version of the DFL’s current party line; it’s the governor who’s being the “moderate”: “Here I am in the middle, and they haven’t moved,” Dayton said of Republican lawmakers. It’s BS, of course; the GOP started the session committed to holding the line at 2010-2011 budget levels; as projected revenues…

  • Let The Interference-Running Begin

    Session ends and, if you believe the the media, the MNGOP spent the entire time sightseeing: All that and more must now await a special session this summer, as the Republican majority and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton ended an acrimonious five-month session with very little business done and a $5 billion projected shortfall mostly untouched. There’s…

  • Chanting Points Memo: The “Chanting Points” Drinking Game!

    Nothing in state government is so sacred that you can’t link it to a drinking game. Although we urge our actual state legislators not to be doing the game-drinking while working. At any rate – since the DFL has a legislative minority and an incredibly weak governor, their best shot at eking a victory out…

  • Dateline: March 26, 2011

    The following scene presumes – heaven forfend – that Mark Dayton wins the election. SCENE:  Office of Governor Mark Dayton.  Dayton is sitting in his chair, idly twirling a nut back and forth on a bolt. DAYTON: (Continues to twirl bolt for about five minutes, back and forth and back and forth…) (Esme Murphy –…

  • Media: AWOL Redux – Nothing Personal; Just Business

    Rachel Stassen-Berger, writing in the Strib yesterday: Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer is all over the new Republican theme — Democratic candidate Mark Dayton doesn’t have a complete budget plan. Emmer hammered the point, made by supportive Republicans repeatedly during the past few days, on a Tuesday spot on Minnesota Public Radio. “Let’s start…

  • The Dayton Dustbowl: Living In A World Of Pure Imagination

    Remember last June? According to the DFL and their buildup of minimum wage leftyblog minions, the fact that Tom Emmer hadn’t released a detailed budget plan was a finger in the eye of The People.  They had a right to knoooooooooow!, after all.  And they had to knooooooooooow it right then and there, dagnabbit! Then…

  • The Dayton Dustbowl: The Media’s Code Of Silence

    Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring does the job the Twin Cities media juuuuust can’t seem to get around to (emphasis added by me): During his mini-infomercial with Esme Murphy, Mark Dayton admitted that the highest income tax rate he’d propose would be less than 11 percent. Based on Minnesota Department of Revenue guidelines, which…

  • Chanting Points Memo: Blowing Sunshine Up Minnesota’s Skirt

    It’s the keystone of Mark Dayton’s entire plan, if he’s elected governor, for trying to close the DFL’s budget deficit. It’s “Tax the Rich”. On Esme Murphy’s WCCO TV show this morning (the program should be called “DFL Puff Piece”, but we’ll come back to that later), Dayton said “the rich” start at $150,000 a…